Scott Hechinger
@ScottHech
Civil rights attorney. Longtime public defender. Dad. Executive Director, Zealous. Fighting everyday to share the truth about public health & safety.
Protect your neighbors from Trump. Share: 🚨If ICE is outside your door, don’t panic & remember: YOU HAVE RIGHTS. Don’t open the door. Ask to see a warrant. ICE can’t enter w/o one. All 5 videos. 7 languages. At wehaverights.us. Watch and share:https://t.co/AnKwKOyXLI
Some GOOD NEWS for a change! This one is personal — it’s been a long time in the making. Thank you to all those who helped along the way.
BREAKING HUGE WIN! 🚨 New York just announced that phone calls will soon be FREE in New York prisons, bringing around $13 million in relief annually to incarcerated people and their families. The new policy is expected to go into effect on August 1st. Spread the news!
Taking your tie off and shaking hands with paid actors does not make you, Andrew Cuomo, any less unfit to lead NYC. You lost bc of your failures as a governor. You lost bc of your empty & tired policy proposals. You lost bc of widespread sexual harassment. Concede & go away.
THREAD. I was asked to give a TED-style talk about civil rights work. It was a good opportunity for me to address how the acceptance, normalization, and even celebration of certain lies by elite liberal institutions lays the groundwork for authoritarianism:
No one should be caged in a violent internment camp. Criminal record or not. And also they’re caging people with no criminal records. Many have at most a traffic ticket.
Florida is committing "enforced disappearance," a very serious violation of international human rights law. miamiherald.com/news/local/imm… ohchr.org/en/special-pro…
I was a public defender for close to ten years. The way Trump is talking about Epstein files — “There’s absolutely nothing to see here! Stop looking!!” — on top of tampering with evidence, is a defense attorney’s nightmare. Id say as bad as an outright confession.
Happy "Independence" Day! 2.3 million incarcerated 5 million on community supervision $180 billion/yr Highest incarceration rate in world 32 states have higher rates than next country 1/4 pop of China. 500k more caged More jailed pretrial than everyone imprisoned in India
This is what I mean when I say investing in things that lower crime is also investing in things that we can all enjoy, appreciate, and utilize. Dual impact. Safer streets and happier people.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott invested in 42 summer youth camps, 29 literacy programs, extended the rec center hours to 11 p.m. planned block parties, opened the pools for safe fun, and opened several schools up for summer classes… Crime is down 62%. Imagine that.
*INDEPENDENCE FROM ICE DAY* I can’t honor America. Horrified by the atrocities it’s committing against immigrants & families. So to honor & protect my friends & neighbors, I’m sharing the 4-part “We Have Rights” series to defend against & document violence by ICE. Please share.
Protect your neighbors from Trump. Share: 🚨If ICE is outside your door, don’t panic & remember: YOU HAVE RIGHTS. Don’t open the door. Ask to see a warrant. ICE can’t enter w/o one. All 5 videos. 7 languages. At wehaverights.us. Watch and share:https://t.co/AnKwKOyXLI
Attempted lynching on July 4, 2020. A Black man went to the lake w/ friends. Nearly killed by white supremacists. Wanted story shared. "I'm not sure what to do next. I consider myself a leader. Leaders are supposed to know what to do." x.com/kenidrarwoods_…
TW// attempted lynching of a black man. A black man, Vauhxx Rush Booker living in Bloomington, Indiana went to visit lake Monroe with his white friends when white supremacists began to target HIM. This man was almost lynched. In broad day. But y’all always ruling ‘suicide’🤔
Occasionally I yearn for the time long ago when I celebrated July 4 and I thought America was great. It was a simpler time, enabled by exceptional privilege. Then I get frustrated that I was asleep, & inadvertently complicit for so long. Could have been fighting far earlier.
I hate this country because I love the potential of this country to do good for its people and the world, and repair the damage it had caused, yet so many institutional forces and powers are committed to preventing us from fulfilling that potential. Does that make sense?
A grim reminder this 4th of July: The US has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on Earth, making it a leader in mass incarceration. Far too many people are locked up in the “land of the free.”
THREAD. Congress just took away healthcare from millions of people, science funding is being gutted, and most people have no real sense of specific ways society will suffer, but this “health and science” reporter at the New York Times is doing this:
If you love this country—or even just what it claims to stand for—you should be outraged. Celebrate July 4 by resisting. By organizing. By radicalizing. By making noise. Because silence isn’t patriotism. It’s surrender.