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Freedom Isn’t Free When You’re Black and Poor
The unforgiving reality of cash bail transforms “innocent until proven guilty” into “guilty until proven wealthy.”
Feb 08, 2025
When I was 17, I was charged with a crime I didn’t commit.
During an argument, I was arrested and wrongfully accused of threatening someone with a firearm, which I hadn’t done. My bail was set impossibly high, far beyond what I could afford, especially as a father to a newborn son. Forced to wait for my day in court behind bars, I came to a heartbreaking realization: If I or someone in my family had been wealthy, I could have walked free. Instead, I was denied my presumption of innocence and ripped from my family because I couldn’t pay for my freedom.
The American criminal justice system, which promises equal justice under the law, punishes poverty, tears families apart, and devastates communities like mine.
We need a system where release is based on case-by-case assessments of safety, not wealth.
Sadly, my story isn’t unique. It reflects a system that routinely prioritizes wealth over justice, especially for Black Americans. As someone who personally faced the burdens of cash bail and now works to alleviate that burden for others through The Bail Project—a national nonprofit providing free bail assistance and pretrial support to thousands of low-income people every year—I firmly believe that we have two systems of justice: one for the wealthy and one for everyone else.
This system incarcerates over 60% of people arrested before trial simply because they can’t afford bail. Safety, not wealth or race, should determine who is held or released before trial. Yet, wealth often dictates freedom. Many accused face nonviolent, low-level charges and pose no risk to public safety, but the unforgiving reality of cash bail transforms “innocent until proven guilty” into “guilty until proven wealthy.”
When someone is arrested, a court can impose a cash bail amount: a sum of money required for their release before trial. If you have the funds, you’re released from jail, no matter the circumstances. If you don’t, you’re locked up. Sometimes for weeks, months, or even years.
Judges tasked with setting bail often make these critical decisions in less than five minutes, relying on limited information and implicit biases that disproportionately affect Black defendants, during hearings that rarely require evidence, and often proceed without legal counsel for the defendants. As a result, Black defendants are detained more often than white defendants facing the same charges. On average, courts impose bail amounts nearly $10,000 higher for Black individuals than their white counterparts.
This disparity has devastating consequences, especially in communities of color. Being jailed before trial makes it harder to fight your case, leading many to plead guilty, even if they’re innocent, just to get out. It risks jobs, housing, physical health, and child custody while exposing legally innocent people to unsafe and traumatizing jail conditions.
Consider Christopher, a Black Gulf War veteran who was arrested for alleged possession of a controlled substance. His bail was set at $1,000: an insurmountable sum for him. Christopher was forced to wait in jail for six weeks before his case was dismissed. During that time, he lost his job as a house painter and his PTSD worsened. All of that suffering, and it was for nothing.
Then there’s Ashley, a Black woman eight months pregnant when a scheduling error led to her arrest for a nonviolent misdemeanor. Unable to pay a $11,500 bail, Ashley spent three weeks in a filthy, overcrowded jail cell, sleeping on the floor without a mattress. She lost her job, her apartment, and was forced to sleep in her car with her newborn daughter after giving birth.
We need a system that ensures fairness and protects safety for everyone. We need a system where release is based on case-by-case assessments of safety, not wealth.
Fortunately, alternatives to cash bail exist and work. Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate cash bail in 2023, and judges now determine who needs to be detained pretrial based on risk to others, not money. This shift has kept communities safe while reducing the number of people needlessly incarcerated pretrial. Nationally, more than 30 cities have safely minimized the use of cash bail, according to research from the Brennan Center for Justice.
This Black History Month, as we reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go to achieve racial equality, let’s not overlook the urgent need for bail reform. Ending cash bail is more than public policy; it’s a moral imperative.
It’s time to put an end to cash bail and write a safer, fairer future for everyone.
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As Trump and Musk Flood the Zone, Solidarity Is Our Life Raft
When they manufacture chaos to divide us, we must recognize it as a desperate attempt to prevent us from building the collective power they fear.
Feb 07, 2025
These first 100 days in any presidency is a statement. A statement made for one's supporters who then cheer in response. U.S. President Donald Trump made a clear statement when he pardoned everyone involved in the assault on the capitol on January 6, 2021. Many have become concerned the message is that political violence on behalf of Trump will be forgiven, condoned, and even encouraged. No doubt his most fervent supporters are receiving the message and have already vowed revenge.
During these first 100 days the messages are also for those who did not vote for the president. Past administrations have often gone to extremes to find a way to include someone in their cabinet from the opposite party, an expression of a political olive branch, a promise to work together, across differences in priorities and ideologies. Here, Trump is sending the message that anyone who has ever even as much as thought in ways that were not in favor of him are in danger, in danger of losing their jobs, and even in physical danger as he prioritized removing security clearances from Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
We are receiving statements, and many of us are left with a set of chaotic destructions to try to untangle and make sense of. The shock and awe, the flooding of the zone that Steve Bannon and others have articulated is playing out. We know their playbook, yet we find our emotions played with regardless. As an already exhausted Stephen Colbert noted on his show on January 30, this isn't our first rodeo. We know how they will push us around with the 24-hour disorienting news cycle, yet somehow we're still receiving a concussion. Even when we can anticipate trauma, it doesn't negate the impact on our bodies—individual and collective.
Trump's entertaining charades, his absurdly chaotic and nonsensical yet mesmerizing performance, leaves us breathless and tells us a lie about our neighbors being our enemies rather than our greatest assets.
On January 29, we saw 67 bodies, 67 lives become extinguished in a tragic crash where an army helicopter crashed into plane landing from Wichita, Kansas in D.C. The country grieved the unimaginable. The first major airline incident since 2009. I know most of us held each other extra close at the news, and our hearts broke for all those whose future would never be the same, who are enduring the unimaginable grief of losing someone who is everything to them.
Yet before families could even begin to process their losses, with a racist and ableist fervor, Trump seized this tragedy as another opportunity to divide us. Without evidence, he blamed diversity initiatives and disabled people—a claim that is unabashedly in opposition of reality. The New York Times reported that staffing shortages are the more pressing concern, with federal agencies struggling for years to fill key positions at the Federal Aviation Administration. The type of staffing that had one air traffic control worker managing both helicopters and planes is reportedly not uncommon, pointing to systemic issues rather than Trump's manufactured and dangerous crisis about diversity in the workplace.
This administration's strategy is clear: Create chaos, place blame on marginalized communities, and hope we're too exhausted to see through the smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile, federal workers are being pressured—by Elon Musk's DOGE initiative no less—to accept questionable "Fork in the Road" resignation offers, further destabilizing our institutions and the people who keep them running. Ironically these resignations are being forced as a way to save money while Elon Musk's company Tesla paid $0 in taxes in 2024.
The cruel irony is that diversity actually strengthens teams and improves performance—this isn't just rhetoric, it's backed by extensive research. Recent McKinsey studies show companies committed to diversity demonstrate a 39% increased likelihood of outperformance. Diverse teams bring unique perspectives that unlock innovation, enhance problem-solving, and create environments where everyone feels empowered to contribute their full expertise. When we artificially limit who can participate, we all lose.
But this administration isn't interested in evidence-based policy. If they were, we would see very different approaches across the board. Take trans healthcare, for example. The American Medical Association has explicitly stated that gender-affirming care is medically necessary, warning that "forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic consequences." They've urged governors to oppose legislation prohibiting such care for minor patients, calling it "a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine." Yet instead of following medical expertise, we see continued demonization of trans youth and their families. This assault on evidence extends further—a harrowing war on science has been unleashed, with Trump officials now targeting even basic terms like "gender" and "disability" through the National Science Foundation.
As this administration wages war on scientific language and evidence-based policy, there is much chaos to weed through, and it is hard to know what to pay attention to. So much of these performances are really designed to exhaust us. To leave us feeling defeated. There are lots of questions about what resistance looks like at a time like this. Even questions as to whether resistance is possible.
My answer to these questions is: Of course there is resistance. In fact, there is what indigenous scholar Gerald Vizenor termed survivance. Right now, surviving IS resistance. When so many of our neighbors are directly threatened, their joy and their existence IS resistance.
These tactics from Trump and Musk are pointing toward how we need to strategize as a response. We need a politics of solidarity. Solidarity means seeing that for most of us who hold complex identities, we are seeing our rights be whittled away. This administration is deploying transparent strategies to turn us against one another even as we see the way elite billionaires—the same ones standing behind him during the inauguration, obstructing the view of his future cabinet—are the only ones likely to thrive. The price of eggs is not going down. Tariffs on our closest neighbors, and our greatest allies, have been put on a pause after another frantic performance that ate up airwaves, yet they loom—leaving the possibility of, in the near future, increasing prices on basic necessities in the United States due to these tariffs. Most of us who are not elite billionaires are unlikely to see our quality of life improve.
Yet, Trump's entertaining charades, his absurdly chaotic and nonsensical yet mesmerizing performance, leaves us breathless and tells us a lie about our neighbors being our enemies rather than our greatest assets. He wants us to forget that we need each other—that our strength lies in our connections, our differences, our willingness to stand together.
There is a lesson here, an insight into what we need to survive, what we need to ensure everyone in our community is safe, and also an insight into what one strategy of dehumanization is for this administration. When they blame disabled people for an awful tragedy like the plane crash on January 29, we must recognize disabled people as vital assets to our communities. When they deny healthcare to trans youth, we must loudly and actively speak out in support of our trans friends, neighbors, and family members. When they vilify immigrants, we must remember that we are—as the poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote—each other's harvest.
But let's be clear: The road ahead will be brutal. As more of us face direct threats to our lives and livelihoods, things will likely get worse before they get even worse. Many of us—disabled people, trans youth, people of color, immigrants, women, educators, dedicated federal workers, and others targeted by this administration—are not safe, and that's not hyperbole. That's precisely why solidarity isn't just a nice ideal—it's a survival strategy. When they manufacture chaos to divide us, we must recognize it as a desperate attempt to prevent us from building the collective power they fear. When they try to exhaust us, we must lean on each other. When they push policies that threaten our very existence, we must hold onto each other tighter.
Our solidarity is not based on naive optimism but on the clear-eyed understanding that we cannot survive alone. In these dangerous times, coming together isn't just an option—it's our only path forward. They want us isolated, exhausted, and afraid. Instead, we choose each other. We choose to recognize that our disabled neighbors make our communities stronger. We choose to stand with trans youth and their families. We choose to see immigrants as vital to our collective future. This is not the easy path—it's the necessary one. And while solidarity alone cannot guarantee our safety, it remains our best defense against those who would rather see us divided and conquered.
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Trump’s Latest Anti-Trans Executive Order Shows That Sports Are Never Just Sports
The steady flow of anti-trans bigotry in sport was the gateway to full-throttle demonization under Trump.
Feb 06, 2025
The first two weeks of Trump 2.0 have been a whirling swirl of venomous prejudice, but one neon throughline of the discombobulating frenzy is an attack on the transgender community. The Trump administration is brazenly attempting to drive trans people out of existence through the denial of education, the ability to get medical care, to travel on a passport, to serve in the military. Trump even cooked up an executive order denying federal funds to schools that allow trans athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports. This is nothing short of an attempt to evict trans people from civic life. This is what banishment looks like.
Sport has played a pivotal role in this grim persecution. Howls of alleged unfairness in the sphere of sport swiftly transmogrified into the unabashed hate that simmers just beneath the legalese in Trump’s executive order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The executive order drips with fear and hyperbole. “The erasure of sex in language and policy,” it claims, “has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.” (If only it were that easy!) The order narrowly defines sex in a way that nixes trans and nonbinary people out of existence.
U.S.-based trans journalist Sydney Bauer told us, “For these political leaders, the goal is to create a segment of society where our civil rights are not needed to be protected so they can advance it to all other areas, despite court rulings increasingly affirming all aspects of trans people’s lives are protected by the 14th Amendment.” She added, “If my gender identity is challenged when I step on a sports field, the goal is for it to be challenged—and forcibly detransitioned—in public life.”
Just as sport was a space for test-driving and spreading anti-trans messaging and policies, it doubles as a platform for fightback against the ongoing horror show.
Athletes and sports administrators set the stage for this confected moral panic. Long before Trump’s executive orders, they engaged in blatant fearmongering, painting trans women athletes as cheaters and even predators. NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines has made transphobia an integral part of her brand. Even tennis icon Martina Navratilova has long viewed trans women athletes as “cheats.” The anodyne-sounding “Protect Women’s Sports” has become the right-wing dog whistle for trans exclusion. The haters’ transphobia even extended to athletes who were not in fact trans. During the Paris 2024 Olympics, a slew of celebrities—from JK Rowling to Elon Musk—mislabeled the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif as trans, ginning up malicious attacks against her.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a seemingly inclusive framework for trans athletes in 2021. But the IOC punted ultimate responsibility to international sports federations, many of which chose to exclude athletes, despite a lack of scientific evidence. Next month, the IOC will select a new president. One frontrunner, Lord Sebastian Coe, has openly opined that trans athletes threaten sport. Other candidates have adopted equally, if not more draconian stances.
Taken together, this steady flow of anti-trans bigotry in sport was the gateway to full-throttle demonization under Trump.
Let’s be clear: The endgame of trans demonization is death. Not only social death, but actual death. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports. If this bill becomes a law, it will cost human lives. Recent research found that state-level anti-transgender laws increased the rates of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth.
Sport was the Trojan Horse used to attack trans people in all walks of life. But the machine is still revving, scanning for targets. Just as the right-wing hate machine didn’t stop with “Protecting Women’s Sports,” transphobia will hurt cisgender women who don’t conform to a narrow, Eurocentric version of womanhood. The Trump administration’s attempt to distill the meaning of “woman” into chromosomes or hormone levels echoes the sexism of the past. Sports have long used sex to control, steamrolling the diversity among women deemed “too masculine.” Ultimately, attacks on transgender people harm all women, especially women of color. Just ask Caster Semenya. Or Dutee Chand. Now the Trump administration is widening the onslaught.
Sadie Shreiner, a trans athlete currently competing in the NCAA, pointed out to us that the Trump administration’s decision to squelch research about transgender individuals is meant “to eradicate our historical and scientific existence.” She added, “This was never about trans athletics, science, or ‘fairness’, it has always been about oppression. They’ll attack me all the same whether I’m on or off the track.”
Across the world, hate mongers are reading Trump’s anti-trans cue card. Travers, a sociologist specializing in trans inclusion at Simon Fraser University, told us, “The anti-trans moral panic that has been fostered in the United States and the United Kingdom has definitely breathed life into anti-trans initiatives in Canada.” Anti-trans groups purporting to “protect women” have also emerged in recent years in Japan. They not only deny trans people their rights, but also their very existence through a discourse directly imported from U.S. politics.
Sports are never just sports. The ongoing moral panic around trans people explodes the erroneous notion that sports and politics are separate endeavors. Just as sport was a space for test-driving and spreading anti-trans messaging and policies, it doubles as a platform for fightback against the ongoing horror show.
Chris Mosier, the first trans athlete to represent Team USA (in duathlon and triathlon), posted on Bluesky: “We will fight. We will take care of each other. We will continue to exist, long after this administration is done.” Harrison Browne, the first transgender professional hockey player, appearing on Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports podcast, urged for “debunking these myths of trans women and their participation.” Trans-rights advocacy groups are kicking into gear. Travers, the sociologist, said that the moment demands “Immediate resistance, legal resistance, public resistance, refusal to go along. But I also think it’s really important to play the long game,” building bona fide solidarity in the nooks and crannies of society.
There’s no question that when it comes to the possibility of trans banishment, we’re experiencing a five-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck moment. We have a fight on our hands. It’s time to link elbows and stand together on the right side of history.
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