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Southtown gallery Presa House will host two events this month that engage a broader cross-section of the city than the typical art world crowd. The first takes place Sunday, April 11, and is the latest in a monthly documentary screening program conducted in partnership with the PBS Indie Lens Pop-Up Virtual series.
Last year, the Texas prison system unwittingly started a controlled experiment. Agency leaders have long blamed prisoners’ friends and families for a constant flow of drugs they say are often smuggled in through visits and greeting cards. To combat this, prison officials in early March set up new rules curtailing prisoner mail. Two weeks later, they shut down visitation to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
Read the rest of this article from the Texas Tribune and the Marshall Project.
On Feb. 8, the Houston Police Department (HPD) arrested a homeless man, 57-year-old Israel Iglesias, for allegedly handing an undercover cop 0.6 grams of methamphetamine. Iglesias died the next day in the county jail. Results of his autopsy remain pending. Iglesias’s death has raised obvious questions about what priorities the police and the Harris County prosecutor’s office have when it comes to solving or preventing crimes: Why, critics have asked, did police find it necessary to execute an undercover drug sting in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic?
George Floyd’s loved ones appeared before a state House committee Thursday to support a sweeping police reform bill named for the former Houston resident, who was killed last May when a Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground with a knee to the neck for almost nine minutes.
Social justice activists from around the state are planning to gather at the Texas Capitol building Thursday to urge state legislators to pass police reform bills introduced in the wake of the officer-involved killing of George Floyd. One of the bills, named the George Floyd Act, would ban police choke holds, require deadly force to end "the moment the imminent threat" ends, and limit the use of qualified immunity in police brutality lawsuits, among other measures.
Read the rest of this article from the Austin American-Statesman.
Dallas ISD must stop using school suspensions as the district works to redress racial disparities, a group of local and statewide education advocates demanded Tuesday. Doing so would help keep children on track and position DISD as a national “game-changer” in taking meaningful steps toward policies that underscore the Black Lives Matter movement, advocates said.
Lia Pikus is no stranger to the intersection of seemingly unrelated passions. As a recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a grant that allows graduating seniors to pursue an independent study project outside of the United States, she is bringing together two passions of hers — music and prison abolitionism — for her project “Beyond the Bars: Music’s Role in Reimagining Punishment.” At some point in the near future, she will be setting off to observe inner-carceral music programming first hand and experience musical community on a global scale.
Exactly one year after the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) first asked Governor Greg Abbott to protect incarcerated people and their communities from the urgent threat of COVID-19, the organization is remembering the lives lost to the virus and continuing to push for action. On March 16, 2020, TCJC and a large group of advocates and system-impacted people published a letter to Governor Abbott and the state’s criminal justice agencies with clear directives to mitigate the potential disaster of a deadly and fast-spreading virus in youth and adult corrections facilities.
Starting Monday, Texas prisoners will be able to see their loved ones in person again with some restrictions. It's been one year since Texas banned prison visits due to the pandemic. Here & Now's Tonya Mosley speaks with Kirsten Ricketts, who hasn't seen her husband Jeremy Ricketts since March 13, 2020. She's on the steering committee for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's Statewide Leadership Council.
For the first time in a year, Texas inmates will be allowed in-person visits, another sign that the state is working to return to some semblance of normalcy following the disruptions of COVID-19. The policy takes effect Monday (March 15), according to a recent story from the Texas Tribune.
Read the rest of this article from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
