Every single public defender. Every single day.

Bail arguments, motions, oral arguments, hearings. Judges don’t know, follow, or care about the law. Prosecutors are willing to take advantage of it. And mandatory minimums, withheld evidence, & pretrial detention coerces people to plead before trial. When theres a jury. A shot.
But defenders still fight. And still win. Most times wins aren’t “Justice.” It’s power of repetition of argument in front of same judges. Introducing those in power to the people they oppress. Not just a RAP sheet or words on a page. Defenders make it harder to be brutal & cruel.
I worked as a public defender at an office as well resourced as any in the country. Social workers, team of investigators, a reentry team, support staff, specialist attorneys in immigration, housing, education, family. Relatively low caseloads (80-100). And yet still injustice.
Most think that balancing the scales of justice means more funding for defenders. Thats part of it. Enough a attorneys to actually be at bail hearings. Wrap around services to be able to help people trapped in the system end up better off in their communities. Lower caseloads.
But funding for defense in isolation isn’t enough. For one, large swaths of country don’t even have public defender offices. Rely on “assigned counsel systems” of private attorneys. Their judge friends give them cases. They so little if any work. End up w/ “results” like this: https://t.co/72FWwNj5tQ
Another issue is independence. Public defender offices are often beholden by law to the very governmental bodies that oppress the people they serve. In PA last year, this defender was fired simply for arguing the county’s bail practices were unjust.
Even the most well funded & independent defenders are crushed by the web of laws & practices designed to oppress. Mandatory minimums & other harsh sentencing laws, pretrial human caging, laws allowing prosecutors to withhold evidence undermine the promise of public defense.
Defenders have perspective from seeing everyday how the system is set up to ensure Justice fails. So while fighting for resources & independence & doing everything possible in & out of court, defenders must join w/ the people & communities they serve to fight to end this system.
Proud to be working together with an extraordinary group of advocates & activists & artists & defenders & communities across the country right now to break down barriers of distrust between defender & community, strengthen coalitions, & build new capacity for strategic advocacy.

More from For later read

1. The death of Silicon Valley, a thread

How did Silicon Valley die? It was killed by the internet. I will explain.

Yesterday, my friend IRL asked me "Where are good old days when techies were


2. In the "good old days" Silicon Valley was about understanding technology. Silicon, to be precise. These were people who had to understand quantum mechanics, who had to build the near-miraculous devices that we now take for granted, and they had to work

3. Now, I love libertarians, and I share much of their political philosophy. But you have to be socially naive to believe that it has a chance in a real society. In those days, Silicon Valley was not a real society. It was populated by people who understood quantum mechanics

4. Then came the microcomputer revolution. It was created by people who understood how to build computers. One borderline case was Steve Jobs. People claimed that Jobs was surrounded by a "reality distortion field" - that's how good he was at understanding people, not things

5. Still, the heroes of Silicon Valley were the engineers. The people who knew how to build things. Steve Jobs, for all his understanding of people, also had quite a good understanding of technology. He had a libertarian vibe, and so did Silicon Valley

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