CPD IN THE NEWS

It’s been 25 years since Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994—also known as the ’94 Crime Bill. Signed into law by President Bill Clinton and authored by now-presidential hopeful Joe Biden, it was designed to send a political message that Democrats could be just as tough on crime as their Republican counterparts. It was supposed to reduce “violent crime” by imposing longer jail sentences, creating more death penalty-eligible offenses, cutting higher educational opportunities for incarcerated people, and providing billions of dollars to states to build more prisons and hire 100,000 new police officers. In short, the plan was to lock up more people, lock them up longer, and lock them up in more places. It was a brutal strategy that targeted and devastated Black and Brown communities for an entire generation.

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Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a national figure who has used her platform to promote bold policies on the climate crisis and healthcare, unveiled Wednesday a package of six economic justice bills to tackle American poverty and inequality.

The New York Democrat's "A Just Society" package—which includes provisions that aim to expand the rights of tenants, workers, immigrants, and formerly incarcerated individuals—won praise from anti-poverty advocates such as Philadelphia Councilmember Helen Gym, vice chair of Local Progress, a national network of progressive elected officials serving in local governments.

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On the morning of September 27, 2018, 52-year-old Christine Blasey Ford entered the hearing room of the Senate Judiciary Committee, prepared to tell the panel, and the millions of people watching around the country, how Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the summer of 1982 when she was 15.

The public hadn’t seen Dr. Ford before this moment. No one knew what she looked like, no one knew what she was going to say. Now, a year later, we asked 10 women what they remembered about that day: women who were present as activists, women who had to cover the hearings for their jobs, women who had experienced sexual assault, and women who found the strength to speak up.

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López Varona also pushed back on the idea of a new PROMESA. “We as a coalition of groups in Puerto Rico and the U.S. continue to oppose PROMESA and any other legislation that imposes federal oversight in Puerto Rico, because it hasn’t worked,” he said, referring to a coalition that includes Vamos4PR, the Center for Popular Democracy, Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora, Diáspora en Resistencia, Diáspora en Acción, and Construyamos Otro Acuerdo. “The summer uprising showed people want democracy; they want to be part of the decisions being made.”

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