Poverty is Not a Crime: New York’s Bail Law Explained

There’s a lot of bad information about the new bail laws. I’m here to give you the facts.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, one of the most effective strategies that the federal government used to sow tension and destruction was divide and conquer. It seems so easy to see now, but at that time, no one really had a clear-eyed view of what was going on. All they knew was that things were happening, people were dying, and relationships were changing. The sober truth is that our movement leaders and community folks didn’t fall for this because they were simpletons, they were far from that. And it wasn’t because the government was so brilliant in their approach. The government just used the multitude of tools available to cause fissures where they could find them.

One of the most effective tools they used was the media. With the help of conservative media and white supremacists working as journalists, they used trumped-up stories and false narratives to misrepresent the work that organizers were doing. It’s why you hear more about Dr. King’s “I Had a Dream” speech than you do about his anti-war rhetoric. It’s why people still see the Black Panthers as a “violent group of radicals” instead of the community leaders that started the school breakfast program and…