Category: Uncategorized

Where is the death penalty movement today?

scales of justice statue

The prospect of a death penalty repeal has never gotten as far along in Ohio as it has this year. So it seemed like a great time to bring together Jennifer Pryor, Director of Organizing & Community Outreach at Ohioans to Stop Executions, and Sarah Craft, Death Penalty Program Director at EJUSA. They discussed the evolution of the death penalty movement over the past 17 years. 

To put it plainly, a lot has changed. In 2005, leadership that supported executions. Today, national and local leaders vocally condemn capital punishment. Executions have decreased to just over a third of what the numbers were in the past.

National support for repealing the death penalty has grown every year. Many more people are being vocal about being against executions fundamentally. Historically, a call for innocence or obvious racial bias has dictated the wave of support.

There’s a clearer understanding that racial disparities in the death penalty run throughout the criminal legal system. Visit our YouTube Channel to listen to their conversation.

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A Review of Who We Are

who we are movie poster

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a focal point during the Civil Rights Movement, I had been to museums and monuments around the city that honor activists and organizers from the sixties. I’ve read every plaque, and I know every story where a Black person was denied access to a building during segregation. 

The steps leading up to my school were the very same steps that a mob beat Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth for trying to enroll his daughters into John Herbert Phillips High School, a white school at the time. 

I can give you directions to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, point out one of A.G. Gaston’s old buildings, and recite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Each story, legacy, and struggle permeated my everyday life in both obvious and subtle ways.

As I got older, I became aware of the evolution of anti-Black racism over the years. The familial relation between American slavery and it’s offspring — mass incarceration, poverty, death penalty, and others — became clearer.

As I sat down to participate in a virtual screening of Jeffery Robinson’s Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, I was skeptical that I would learn anything new about our country’s history of racism.

My issue was that I kept being left with the same unanswered questions. How do we reconcile what’s been going on for centuries with what people of color are still suffering from today? And, I had yet to watch anything that fully answered my questions.

The documentary opens with Robinson, the former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, giving a lecture on Juneteenth about anti-Black racism in the U.S. The platform reminded me of a TEDTalk, so I was excited to see the visual aspects of his speech. 

To reduce his lecture down to its bare bones, he argues that America, the country that we love, was founded on anti-Black racism, and the effects of that are pretty obvious.

He draws a line from Virginia laws that allowed the death of an enslaved person while resisting a master, and the death of Black people today killed while resisting arrest by a police officer.

Throughout his talk, there’s footage of him traveling to lynching sites and institutions that were built by enslaved people, showing the remnants of our racist founding. 

The most troubling part of the documentary was his conversations with supporters of the confederacy. The individuals he met with were unaware of how enslaved people were treated and the true cause of the Civil War. As books and media that tell the full picture of America are banned, I fear that the gap between the truth and the people is widening.

Many of the reviews of this movie call it a necessary watch. Whenever a retelling of our history is in the form of a movie or a series, it’s called “necessary.” To their credit, the reviewers are just trying to express how much they think viewers would benefit from watching. However, every other piece that comes out on a streaming platform can be considered “necessary” or a “must watch.” 

What’s the difference between Who We Are and, say, a show like Bridgerton, that is considered a “must watch”? 

The thing that’s standing between us as Americans and true change, is our inability to reckon with our history. Until we do that, there will always be a block. So Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America isn’t “necessary,” it’s a step in removing that block.

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A Personal Experience with Trauma to Trust

people talking at table

When someone joins the EJUSA team, the organization works to get them to Trauma to Trust quickly to experience the exploration of trauma and its impact on people and communities. My turn came in the fall of 2021.

I hit the road, in central New Jersey, at 6 a.m. to get to the training center in Newark early. I was excited to lend staff support to the team as they delivered a unique, innovative training in a challenging session.

I should back up and give a little context. EJUSA’s Trauma to Trust (T2T) program is a 16-hour experience that creates space for community residents such as survivors of violence, formerly incarcerated people, and community activists to have a guided conversation with local police officers. The goal is to reduce harm in the relationship between police and communities of color by increasing empathy, mutual understanding, trust, and accountability that repairs through truth exchanges and learning about trauma.

Every training session is different, but I didn’t expect a potentially traumatic incident to intrude on the work at hand. Our program leader, Lionel Latouche, had his wallet stolen on his way to the session. The experience could have thrown the team off track, for understandable reasons. But the power of a trauma-informed space quickly became evident. 

Tracee Thomas, T2T’s project manager, called the EJUSA team — including Zayid Mohammed, our Newark strategist, and Dr. Monique Swift, a former full-time staff who serves as a session facilitator — back to center as we stood facing each other outside the training room. 

Tracee led us through grounding techniques and created a sense of safety — crucial when a person is involved in a traumatic situation, regardless of their perspective. We didn’t just learn about trauma, we experienced collective healing together. We did some deep breathing. Each of us shared a word that we would be holding throughout the day. I felt myself relax. 

Lionel arrived just a few minutes into introductions, and he and Dr. Swift kicked off the session with a bang. My nerves dissipated as I started soaking up the learning. 

Dr. Swift first talked about the three E’s of trauma. Individual trauma is a result of an event that a person experiences that has a lasting adverse effect. So, for instance, a childish scare in a hallway might be an event that you experience, but may not have a lasting impact. However, if hallways continue to scare you, then we would call that a traumatic event.

We shifted to learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This theory suggests that these traumatic events, specifically in childhood,increase the likelihood of being impacted by a decreased lifespan. We talked about marginalized groups such as Black women, the largest growing group of incarcerated individuals. Their incarceration is often preceded by sexual trauma, hence the notion of a “sexual abuse to prison pipeline.”

You could feel the tension loosen as the community members and police officers leaned in for a Minute Earth video on the science of epigenetics. We learned that fear can change your genetics and impact the chemicals that affect your DNA, as evidenced by a study of Swedish families who suffered starvation. Our T2T cohort included Black and Brown people who collectively nodded as we heard the term “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.”

By the middle of the day, everyone was eager to dig into locally sourced lunch from Newark’s BurgerWalla. Sharing a meal feels crucial to the process of breaking down barriers and creating common ground. Officers and community members were tentatively sharing jokes as they ate and drank. The day continued with more intensive learning.

We returned to the training center the following Wednesday for another eight-hour day. At this point, people were familiar with each other’s faces. I felt a warmer vibe as we served breakfast and coffee. Attendees were already asking Tracee who would be catering lunch because they knew she’d selected another all-star local vendor. Community members and officers got excited when they learned that  Irvington’s KB’s BBQ Smokehouse was on the menu. 

Having laid a solid foundation and understanding of trauma in session one, session two focused on equipping participants with trauma-informed responses to incidents of violence. 

T2T participants started to open up about the trauma they experience in their respective roles. I teared up as I heard one community advocate talk about the trauma of seeing a loved one’s dead body treated disrespectfully by the police. The pain was palpable, even years later. Another community member was finally able to express his deep grief about losing a childhood friend to gun violence. He had never had the space to express the pain. 

My heart ached when I heard a police officer talk about watching a woman take her last breath as her toddler nephew stood by, then having to go to his own home and greet his wife and kids as if nothing significant had happened. Dr. Swift probed the officer about how he felt. Finally, after deflecting for several minutes, he was able to articulate how traumatic that day had actually been. Trauma truly is everywhere. Once this officer reluctantly admitted to the psychological impact his work had on him, he also shared the fact that he struggled to get the support he needed. 

The reality is, officers often don’t have the time to properly heal. And there’s some stigma involved when officers do ask for that kind of support, which perpetuates the trauma cycle.That revelation caused many community members to gasp. Who would want their mental health held against them when being considered for promotion? This double-bind drew empathy from the whole room. Our current criminal legal system harms everyone. 

We could feel people changing their minds in that training center in Newark: we slowly moved from an “us versus them” paradigm, to a recognition of the universal need to heal from collective trauma caused by violence. We went from blaming individuals, to naming the present day systems and historical dynamics that cause us to lash out. We progressed from seeing punishment as the only solution, to imagining a system where safety is built through collective healing and non-punitive accountability. 

I think we all left that day feeling cautiously optimistic about implementing what we’d learned. I, for one, gained a trauma-informed lens that I’m confident will stay with me.

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Remarkable Women

women looking at water

Reimagining Justice This Month: February

Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence — responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.

Remarkable Women: Tonja Myles, NBC Local 33

In this spotlight on one of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network members, Tonja Myles, we can see what is possible when solutions come from the people who are most impacted by violence. As a survivor many times over, Tonja knows that people in crisis need community, not enforcement. That’s why she’s a leading advocate for the 988 crisis line, a national alternative to 911 that goes straight to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 

Not Another Child: Mother Turns Grief into Solutions for Gun Violence, Grieving Families, Mississippi Free Press

Oresa Napper-Williams is connected to a growing network of women meeting the needs the current justice system fails to address. Mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and daughters are bringing empathy where law enforcement too often only blames young Black people for the harm they experience. They’re also building legacies of humanity where the legal system ignores and further hurts communities. From harm reduction to grief support, and healing circles to wrap-around services, these women are breaking cycles of trauma and creating equity and safety through collective action.    

NYC Council Supports Movement to Expand Victim Compensation Eligibility, Pix11

Movements are powerful when they are led by the people closest to the problems that need solving. Survivors and victims’ family members gathered in New York City to tell their stories. They know intimately that in the wake of violence, people need pathways to healing, including financial support for unexpected hospital bills, mental health counseling, and replacing locks. They also know first-hand just how many barriers exist in the current system, especially for those who need support the most. Their voices are leading the call to expand access to victim compensation and create pathways to healing for all. (Bonus: if you’re in New York, you can add your voice, too, and learn more about the issue from our partners at Common Justice here).

In Case You Missed It: On the EJUSA Blog 

  • A Step Forward for True Justice — in the Director’s Corner, Jami Hodge shares her thoughts on the groundbreaking nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • Failed By the System — read Sarah Craft’s call for all of us to act to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio, whose experience epitomizes the cycles of violence perpetuated by the criminal legal system.

 

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Podcasts on the Possibility of Justice

close up of silver microphone

Recently, the New York Times emailed about “6 true-crime podcasts on the dark side of romance.” These six podcasts, they tell us, are “true stories of abusers, liars and romantic con artists who ruthlessly exploit their victims’ desire for love.” The descriptions of the stories follow a well-worn path, pulling us in with the intrigue of the perfect victim and the dangerous individual, drawing us closer with the promise of power struggle as the definition of relationship, and selling us a picture of justice as punishment.

The list was actually published weeks ago, but it must’ve gotten noticed enough, because now it’s the hook to sign up for this Times list called Love Letter. It’s the kind of clickbait that’s not surprising in a society where too many women experience violence, and publishers too often cater to the supposed human interest in violent, often sensationalized stories. 

Nor is it surprising that the New York Times, with its massive platform and reach, is casually promoting deep narratives that uphold false solutions to violence.

This is the same New York Times that routinely publishes articles about violence and rising crime in the words of police chiefs, police union reps, and vaguely defined “experts” only. Story after story ignores and erases the voices of the people and community-based organizations working every day on the frontlines keeping communities safe. These articles peddle policing and incarceration as if they are and have always been the only possible solutions to violence. This is a narrative that relies on pervasive assumptions that human nature is violent, people are singularly responsible for and defined by the individual choices they make, and that punishment creates justice. And, frankly, it’s a narrative that ensures that the justice system will continue to fail communities most impacted by violence.

The truth is that those narratives – alongside narratives that Black people are scary, that youth don’t listen and are dangerous, and community suffering is moral failure rather than systemically produced – are constructed and reconstructed. Every day. Every hour. Every email we get from the New York Times, from Fox News, every time we turn on the local news, every time we check our social media feeds. 

To shift these narratives we need to do more than just repeat that the opposite is true. Instead, we need to change how we listen and who we listen to. Smart, compassionate, committed people who are excellent communicators have known and been saying for generations that violence has roots, causes, and solutions. Resilient, creative, dedicated people are caring for communities and building safety every day. A different world in which violence is preventable and in which people get what they need after something terrible happens isn’t just possible, it’s happening all around us already. 

The truth is that stories of people building safety, healing, and accountability that repairs are everywhere. We need only look and listen differently to notice that love and relationship is also a force for care, belonging, and safety. Every neighborhood that experiences violence is full of people to call when something happens, and even to stop something from happening before it does. Every city with rising violence during the pandemic is full of people and groups who have quelled that rise, grasping community safety at the roots and saving lives despite systems designed to fail them. 

Systems that create community safety are already here, emerging to meet needs wherever they are. Maybe these four podcasts can help us learn to better see them, to better listen, and to reflexively lift up the possibility of the safe world at the edges of our imagination: 

Decarceration Nation

Hosted by Joshua B. Hoe, this podcast lifts up direct experiences of those who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, as well as those who are building alternatives, in order to reimagine the justice system. Start with the conversation with Danielle Sered, Executive Director of Common Justice, to explore root causes of violence and solutions to breaking cycles of trauma. 

Freedom Dreams

Each week, the Freedom Dreams team interviews people creating safety, healing, and accountability that doesn’t rely on police and prisons. From stories about advocacy to stop the construction of new jails, to community-based violence prevention and intervention groups building safety, every episode offers deep looks into the work happening in Detroit and beyond. Start with episode five, on healing and reimagining community safety.

One Million Experiments

Solutions that are grounded in transformation instead of punishment are everywhere, and this podcast aims to showcase all of them. Every one of their short list of episodes features conversations with those building and leading community-based programs that are preventing violence, healing trauma, and creating safety without police and prisons. Start with episode four, on transforming responses to harm.

Abolition X

If you’ve ever wondered what people really mean when they say they are prison abolitionists, this podcast wants to give you answers. Hosts Richie Reseda, Indigo Mateo, and Vic Mensa sit down in each episode to talk to leaders in the anti-violence movement to find out how they came to this work and explore the approaches that are working. Start at the beginning.

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Failed by the System

Image of a judge's gavel.

Melissa Lucio is likely innocent, but Texas plans to execute her on April 27 anyway.

There’s a real risk that Texas might execute an innocent person next month.

Melissa Lucio was tried, convicted, and, in 2008, sentenced to death for a crime that likely never happened. Now, a broad coalition of organizations and experts are calling on Texas to stop her execution and review her innocence claims.

When Melissa was moving her family into a new apartment in 2007, her daughter Mariah fell down a steep set of exterior stairs. Although her injuries did not appear life-threatening, two days later Mariah went to sleep for a nap and never woke up.

The same day that her daughter died, the Texas Rangers interrogated Melissa for five straight hours until three in the morning. She was pregnant with twins, sleep-deprived, and isolated — on top of being in shock because of her daughter’s death. In other words, Melissa was susceptible to the coercive interrogation tactics being used against her — which have proven to regularly produce false confessions. Part of the aggressive and psychologically manipulative interrogation can be seen in a recent episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, in which he shines a spotlight on wrongful convictions.

Melissa’s case is another example of a person who was ignored and mistreated by systems that are supposed to help people — the police, public welfare, housing, child welfare, victim services, and more. She experienced decades of sexual and physical assault from male figures in her life, from her uncle and stepfather to her husband. Her requests for help fell on deaf ears. But then something absolutely horrible happened to her.

Texas chose to execute Melissa and continue pouring resources into a system that doesn’t heal anyone or make communities safer. Those funds could instead have gone towards the systems that might help Melissa and others like her, preventing future tragedy.

Melissa Lucio will be executed on April 27, 2022, unless ​​Cameron County’s new district attorney, the courts, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and Gov. Abbott review Melissa’s innocence claim. Take action with the Innocence Project to say: Stop the execution of Melissa Lucio.

Melissa’s case highlights just how misguided the death penalty can be. Tell Texas not to make a devastating and irreversible mistake.

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To fight crime, build an ecosystem of safety

repair protest sign

Reimagining Justice This Month: February

Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence — responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.

To fight crime, build an ecosystem of safety, The Advocate

In Baton Rouge, like cities around the country, the current public safety system’s focus on enforcement and incarceration has not addressed the needs of communities experiencing rising violence. But people in these same communities know that models that are locally led can heal trauma, create accountability, and build safety. Nicole Scott, Sateria Tate, and Elizabeth Robinson — members of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network — have all been failed by the system before and after violence, and have responded with programs that are part of an ecosystem of safety capable of staunching the rise in violence and creating thriving communities. Imagine what would be possible if these programs were the norm.  

One Million Experiments: MASK, with Tamar Manasseh, Podcast Episode

Tamar Manasseh and others in Chicago have been building Mothers & Men Against Senseless Killings (MASK) for seven years. Together, they interrupt the violence that policing and prisons have been unable to address, while transforming responses to harm in their neighborhood in ways that are making punishment obsolete. Even as our airwaves and newsfeeds continue to be full of stories that ignore the true causes of violence, innovative approaches like MASK are evolving in communities around the country — with much room to grow and thrive.  

Much Like the Victims they Try to Help, Gun Violence Prevention Workers Have Scars, Time

Last year, our country suffered over 44,000 deaths due to gun violence, with 40,000 more injuries. Despite the surge, anti-violence workers bravely intervened to break cycles of trauma. These workers are increasingly seen as integral parts of the public safety ecosystem because their programs are effective and because the communities facing violence receive them as credible and trusted. Yet our society undervalues their work, which takes a personal toll. Together, we can change that. (Bonus: learn more about the recent report on what anti-violence workers need to be whole and healthy as they create safety here.)

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A Step Forward for True Justice

US Supreme Court

Today my heart is beyond full because of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her nomination to the Supreme Court is historic and groundbreaking on so many levels. And for me, as the sister of a man deeply harmed by our criminal legal system, and as the leader of an organization committed to healing as a cornerstone of a new vision for justice, I see Judge Jackson as a beacon of inspiration for the perspective she will bring on criminal legal issues. It is incredibly important for our highest court to now have the experience she will bring as a former public defender who understands the power the government wields to take away someone’s life and liberty, and the way that power has disproportionately harmed Black communities. Reimagining justice requires a deep understanding of the damage brought by what exists, and Judge Jackson will deliver that at the most consequential level. 

This nomination is deeply personal for me, too. I decided, at age 9, to be a lawyer and knew that there had never been a Black woman on the Supreme Court. When I imagine Judge Jackson behind the bench, a descendant of enslaved people, a Black woman who had to work harder and fight through bias and discrimination, I — like millions of other Black women and girls — see myself. And I feel confident we have someone who will keep in the center of her mind the poor, marginalized people who have felt the sweeping harm of this system. Judge Jackson is exactly who we need.

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God’s Law and Order Book Review

Hands holding bible behind bars

Historian Aaron Griffith’s book God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America meets evangelicals at the intersection of the two vocal camps: those calling for more law and order as well as those wanting to build a justice system that heals. 

This book has been rightly praised, including being honored as Christianity Today’s 2022 Best Book Award for History & Biography. A “religious history of mass incarceration,” this book is a work of both analysis and admonition.

Griffith — a member of the Advisors Group for Equal Justice USA’s Evangelical Network — argues that one “cannot understand the creation, maintenance, or reform of modern American prisons…without understanding the impact of evangelicalism.” Prisons and evangelicals intertwined themselves to both shape culture while simultaneously showing our culture for what it is, because of a belief in evangelical circles that 1) “rising crime reflected growing secularity” and 2) “state power was ultimately responsible for addressing the problem.”  

The early twentieth-century progressive movement “insisted on making crime (not poverty or other social ills) the primary problem to solve.” Rather than simply criminalizing certain sins, evangelicals said that any broken law is a sin, regardless of personal trauma or systemic barriers to flourishing. Therefore, a seemingly biblical response to lawlessness is more law enforcement, something the book references and that Griffith expounds on in a separate article. 

Put another way, control of behavior and conversion of the soul was prized over a compassionate consideration of what the law breaker, victims, and communities need. 

Griffith calls on evangelicals to repent of “past punitive sins,” a form of conversion, since “conversions are what evangelicals do best.” This is not a cheeky turn of phrase but a genuine call for reform through repentance. 

The book accurately centers the complicity of evangelicals in the development of the modern justice system while also acknowledging how evangelicals have been “pioneers in humanitarian engagement with modern prison life” through efforts like prison ministry. 

Griffith’s call is for evangelicals to take that individuals-focused fervor and turn it toward a systems-focused zeal to convert a prison system into one that heals rather than one that harms.

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Transformation in a Reform World

Image of legislation

EJUSA’s vision is a world where violence is rare and every community is safe and healthy. That means that we have a criminal legal system that doesn't cause more harm. 

A full scale transformation of the criminal legal system and all the systems that connect to it is work that will take generations. We need to both rehab the mess we have now and build a new public safety ecosystem. 

Today — and since forever —  our criminal legal system focuses on one outcome: who caused harm and how do we punish them? There’s little to no concern for the survivor of that harm or the way the community recovers. 

The policies that cities, states, and our federal government have put into place for over two centuries rely on the idea that we must center the person who caused harm. This punishment strategy is a failure and often causes more harm to families and communities. We must break this cycle of harm as we also work to transform the justice system. 

From where I sit at EJUSA, there are two questions I ask myself nearly every day. 

First, what is a policy landscape that both tears down what’s not working (pretty much everything) and puts the structures and procedures in place that prevent violence and deliver healing to everyone affected by violence without causing further harm to anyone? 

And second, what does transformation even mean when we’re talking about changing policy in an environment, such as a legislative body, whose job is to steward and tweak the existing laws? Laws created by our state legislatures, arguably, impact the day-to-day lives of our communities in ways we don’t even know.

State legislatures have already started opening their doors to begin legislating policy that is both big and full of minutiae — all of it impacting people in every state across the country. It’s a funny time of year where the words of dead language light our path through the legislature. We — lawmakers, activists, my teammates and coalition partners — say words like sine die, cloture, and germane like it’s a lunch order. It’s a terrible, critically important, and utterly opaque process filled with high drama that is also incredibly boring. They don’t teach us Sun Tzu in political science because they think it only informs strategy to fight actual wars.  

In my mind, it’s possible to support policy change that lessens the harm of the current legal system as we work to pass legislation that builds a foundation that embraces new and transformational strategies to interrupt and prevent violence. 

I wish I was here to tell you I have it all figured out, but it’s hella complicated. 

I know it is possible to go from a punishment based system to one that prioritizes healing and violence prevention while building a world where violence is rare, but it’s no small job. We definitely can’t do it all in one legislative season, we definitely can’t do it all in one legislative session, but as you’ll read below critical bills are being introduced that can be the foundation for transformation. 

Every piece of legislation is an opportunity to arrest the harm the current system causes and, at the same time, plant seeds for a transformed future. I’m excited to share a few ways we will support our whole vision in the 2022 legislative season:

What are we working on?

What trends am I watching this legislative cycle?

  • State legislative postures toward criminal justice reform — In the last five years we’ve seen state legislators and voters across the country be narrowly reform-minded. I say narrowly because many, though not all, of those reforms are centered on nonviolent offenses. But no matter how narrow or specific, every action has a reaction. Anecdotally, I’ve started to notice legislators lean away from reforms and solutions that are not centered on punishment.
  • Distribution of federal stimulus and COVID relief money at the state and local level — States, counties, and cities are receiving billions of dollars in relief that is available to be spent on community-based violence prevention.  
  • Republican sponsorship of death penalty repeal bills — Over the last decade, we’ve seen an increase in the number of republican co-sponsors. In just the last two legislative cycles, Republican are listed as sponsors on bills to abolish the death penalty in 11 states plus the Federal Government.

Why am I hopeful?

Recognition of the need to transform our criminal legal system and the business of public safety continues to grow in our collective imagination. Dreaming about what’s possible is the first step to imagining the structures we need to tear down and build to get to a world where violence is rare. 

Efforts to reform can contribute to transformation but we must continually make sure to excise the devil from the details - not falling back on lesser punishment, insisting that we offer new ways of doing business as we tear down the most terrible parts of existing policy in an effort to clear the way for transformational change. It’s a double edged sword and we must always be bold in our choices. 

May your legislative sessions bring good policy to your state.

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