Mustafa Ali-Smith

Thinking about community, social justice and racial equity. Senior program associate @verainstitute.

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

In my latest for @truthout I wrote about our urgent need to abolish the death penalty. So many lives lost.

Rather than practices rooted in power and retribution, we need a framing of justice that centers rehabilitation—one grounded in healing, transformation, and human dignity.

[Truthout @truthout]

The death penalty is always an atrocity, not just for the wrongfully convicted. We must abolish it.
https://t.co/RBTEZ6Mf63

[Vera Institute of Justice @verainstitute]

For decades, "tough on crime" legislation has failed communities and ratcheted up incarceration.

Today, lawmakers in Congress continue to support bills that won’t work to prevent crime or break its cycle.

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

Much of the reaction to the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act has been focused on the national and state levels, but its effect in silencing Black voters at the local level might be even larger, @GrahamDavidA argues. https://t.co/HIHPjMHKxq

[Princeton School of Public & International Affairs @PrincetonSPIA]

The Clemency Project “gives students the opportunity to see that you're not defined by the worst thing that you did,” said Joe Krakora, a former New Jersey public defender and SPIA in NJ affiliate. https://t.co/ppOhiScnYl

[Dorothy Roberts @DorothyERoberts]

This makes my blood boil. The arrest for being short $2. The number of cops surrounding her & her child for no justifiable reason. The cop picking up & carrying her child without permission & to who knows where. Why are we funding state violence instead of public transportation?

[Aaron Stagoff @aaron_stagoff]

In @VitalCityNYC today with some ideas for a comprehensive approach to traffic and road safety for the Mamdani administration.

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

Claudette Colvin paid the price of the ticket, the cost of admission to this American struggle for dignity and freedom. We are living our lives, in part, because of what she sacrificed.

https://t.co/Er1iQeMlPI

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

News broke yesterday that Claudette Colvin died at the age of 86. And I find myself sitting with the weight of it—the weight of a name that should have been a household name but became, instead, a story many of us may have never heard before.

[The Nation @thenation]

The ICE killing in Minneapolis represents a refinement of what Noem and Trump and the American right's underlying message has distilled into: that the right kind of people are entitled to destroy anything that threatens, frightens, impedes or even annoys them, and that this right is so sovereign and so unencumbered that any misapplication of it rises only to the level of collateral damage.
https://t.co/wg7g539wnd

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

In my most recent essay, I put some words together about ICE, which, to talk about ICE is to talk about violence in this country. How it is defended. How it is maintained.

Read below:

https://t.co/PE3tIsx2aH

[Equal Justice Initiative @eji_org]

On this day in 1931, a mob of 2,000 white people seized a Black man named Raymond Gunn, placed him on the roof of a school for white students, and burned him alive.
https://t.co/Y8DCKxO7xv

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

My latest essay: The Price of Freedom: on clemency power and the selective nature of American mercy.

https://t.co/jBQrocN6mq

[Educator @DrAnnLopez]

“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else”. - Toni Morrison born Feb 18.

[Prison Policy Initiative @PrisonPolicy]

Unhoused people face a litany of unfair criminal charges simply because they’re unhoused – usually for actions they take when just trying to survive.

Clearly, the solution to homelessness is not more criminalization. No one should be punished for not having a place to stay.

[Prison Policy Initiative @PrisonPolicy]

1 in 3 people behind bars is in jail. Most have yet to be tried in court and are legally innocent.

Does that look like a system built on justice?

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

Sending a big congratulations to @DorothyERoberts, @ruha9, and the rest of these remarkable folks!

[Truthout @truthout]

The death penalty is always an atrocity, not just for the wrongfully convicted. We must abolish it.
https://t.co/RBTEZ6Mf63

[Zara Rahim @ZaraRahim]

two beautiful poets are gone.

[Mustafa Ali-Smith @mustafaalismith]

What do you even say to this. Our justice system failed us. It failed Marcellus.

[Natalie Neysa Alund @nataliealund]

Marcellus Williams' last statement: