December 12, 2024
Joe Biden Pardons Close To 40 People In Largest Single-Day Clemency Act and Black Women Feel A Way
Shouldn't this be a good thing?
In the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history, President Joe Biden announced commuted sentences of roughly 1,500 people and 39 pardons of nonviolent crimes, and Black women aren’t too happy about it, The Hill reports.
“Today, I’m pardoning 39 people with nonviolent crimes who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, and I’m commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 others – many of whom would have received lower sentences today,” Biden wrote on Dec. 12 on Twitter.
“America was built on second chances. That’s what these pardons and commutations represent.”
In early December 2024, Biden also pardoned his son, Hunter, who was facing federal gun charges. As criticism poured in, civil rights activists like Angela Rye attacked Biden for his moves, claiming that his loyalty should be to Black Americans who helped him secure the White House in 2020.
“When you consider the many ways in which Black women—Black people—carried him across the finish line, risked their very lives with the pandemic and after George Floyd’s horrible, tragic murder on camera for nine minutes and 30 seconds, he owes Black people their freedom because people trusted that he would deliver,” Rye said.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) followed suit and called Biden out for failing to keep campaign promises in order to reduce the number of incarcerated Americans.
“Despite pledges by the president to reduce the federal prison population, it has only grown in recent years. President Biden has an opportunity and an obligation to reduce the federal prison population and make good on his campaign promise to address the systemic injustices of mass incarceration before leaving office,” Bush said in a statement.
“With the stroke of a pen, the president can offer these individuals the dignity and redemption they deserve. We urge him to act now.”
White House lawyers claim the issued pardons are for those convicted of nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses who have turned their lives around, including a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters, the deacon of a church who has since worked as an addiction and youth counselor, a decorated military veteran, and a molecular bioscience doctoral student, according to Associated Press.
Bush and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) are pushing for Biden to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who was imprisoned for three years due to a contempt of court charge in correlation to representing Indigenous farmers in a lawsuit against oil and gas giant Chevron.
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