Karena Bakas

“a ring of jailhouse informants-- or 'snitches'--... allegedly received lenient sentences as well as food, drugs, sex and special privileges from detectives... It's not difficult to imahine why a prisoner-informant would lie about overhearing a confession when it means real material benefits... [and] prosecutors are often motivated to make those informants sound believable to a judge. Testimony from a single jailhouse informant is enough to convict a person for a charge as serious as murder... [Snitch] testimony [is] the leading cause of wrongful convictions in US capital cases."
-- Aaron Miguel Cantu”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“There's more at stake here than just slavery, my brother. It's a question of who will own the land, the people, the power. You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, Now I will remove my knife slowly, so let things be easy and clean, let there be no mess. There will always be blood.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“[Trauma] freezes the soul, which is why as time moves forward, so many Black children fall bahind. They are punished more harshly and expelled more quickly... Stranded in the streets [they] are profiled as older, as a threat, as possibly carrying a weapon. When cops bully them, scare them, fuck with them, it's because our children aren't seen as part of the future."
-- Nicholas Powers”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States

“our democracy is controlled by a wealthy elite. Politicians who work for the wealthy need the police to protect them from the people. And so the whole chain of command protects the killer cop. The ruling class give carte blanche to law enforcement, who in turn press down on those most stranded by the neoliberal state, the poor-- and more so, the Black poor."
-- Nicolas Powers”
― Maya Schenwar, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States