FH S4E13: Confronting the Cash Bail System with Ashley Edwards

The news of Derek Chauvin's conviction and the shooting of Ma'Khia Bryant by a police officer in Ohio both hit hard last week; these events have reignited my thinking about how I can take action to improve outcomes for Black and brown and poor people when they encounter police or become ensnared in the justice system. With that in mind, I decided to rebroadcast this interview with Ashley Edwards about why the cash bail system is a worthy place to put our activist attention and how confronting it can keep literally millions of people safer from the abuses of incarceration. It's not abolition, but it's a start. (Original show notes below.)

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Bailout funds have been in the news for weeks now, but how do they fit into the bigger picture of the criminal justice and cash bail systems? Ashley Edwards of MGM Bailout joins Feminist Hotdog this week to talk about the racism inherent in the cash bail system, the predatory lending practices that surround it, how listeners can work to abolish cash bail, and why we should view this as a feminist issue.

Things We Talked About on This Episode

• MGM Bailout
• National Bailout
• Until Freedom Comes Bailout Toolkit
• Black Mama’s Bailout
• Southerners On New Ground
• After Cash Bail: A Framework for Imagining Pretrial Justice