Political Quotes

“Well, it is a great question. I look at it in two ways. First, when you think about mass incarceration as a phenomenon, one that, hopefully, in this Congress we will be able to do something about, in recognition of the fact that America imprisons more people than any other country in the world, increasingly, we have become a country that over-incarcerates and under-educates. As a result, we have lost generations of young people, disproportionately, African Americans and Latinos. In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared publicly that drug abuse was public enemy number one. At the time, there were less than 350,000 people incarcerated in America. That was the starting point of the war on drugs. More than 40 years later we have now got 2.3 million people incarcerated in America. A significant number of those folks-- approximately 50 percent at the Federal level and similar numbers at the State level--are there for nonviolent drug offenses. Yet, every single one of those people who have been incarcerated in America has lost the right to vote, some permanently, some temporarily with an opportunity to perhaps recover it. More than a million people are currently incarcerated from the African American community. So our system is broken. Our democracy is in need of adjustment.…”