You’ve come to expect it, haven’t you?
S. 1789 is a bill to equalize sentences for the equally-addictive, chemically equivalent drugs of powder cocaine and crack cocaine. While rich white people head off to treatment for possessing large amounts of powder, poor black people head off to federal prison for possessing small amounts of crack. Every day that sentencing disparity remains in place, more rich white people head off to treatment while more poor black people head off to prison. Regardless of what you think of the drug war, this is unequitable. It is unfair. Sentencing reform is twenty-five years overdue.
Yesterday, for the fourth time in three months, the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed consideration of S. 1789 and further stalled its passage.
While these senators’ soft and lily-white asses recline on stuffed chairs, people are unduly suffering. Enough of it! If you care, click here find the names of the Senate Judiciary members who haven’t yet cosponsored the bill. Call these senators and ask them to stop with the delays, to stop dithering and proceed with the committee votes that will bring S. 1789 to the floor of the Senate.
