Summer Lee
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Suddenly, we care about proportional punishment.
When it's the corporations that face accountability for poisoning the air children breathe, suddenly criminal penalties are excessive.
When businesses with multi-million dollar monthly revenues face consequences for breaking the law, suddenly we discover concerns about government overreach.
Where is the same compassion for the teenager caught with marijuana?
Where is this concern about disproportionate punishment for the mother struggling with addiction?
Where is the skepticism about criminalization when it affects people who don't have corporate lawyers and public relations teams?
The answer is nowhere because this isn't really addressing over-criminalization in our government.
It's about who deserves protection from government power and who doesn't.
The selective application of justice principles reveals everything about our priorities.
Environmental crimes that harm entire communities get sympathy hearings.
Street-level offenses get mandatory minimums.
Corporate executives get understanding.
Working families get prison sentences.
The community's breathing polluted air, like mine, deserves better.
The children in those communities deserve a government that protects them, not one that protects the corporations that's poisoning them.
They deserve the same concern this committee shows for corporate defendants.
Until every person gets the same consideration we've shown here today for environmental lawbreakers, our criminal legal system will remain fundamentally unjust.
Our government, no matter who is in power, has an obligation to right these wrongs, to provide reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans, to eliminate the racial wealth gap, to uplift the Black community.
Our government, no matter who is in power, has an obligation to right these wrongs, to provide reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans, to eliminate the racial wealth gap, to uplift the Black community.