Bail reform and education funding in an age of coronavirus: Progressives must press ahead

I know it’s hard right now to think about anything but the coronavirus and what the next weeks and months will hold for all of us. But the fact of the matter is we have less than two weeks before the New York State budget is signed, and our fate will also be shaped this year and in the years to come by what is and isn’t in the budget.

So let’s take a minute to consider it.

Last year New York State achieved a historic civil-rights victory when we passed new bail and discovery laws designed to end the crisis of mass incarceration of legally innocent black and Latino people awaiting trial. But months before the new bail law even went into effect, judges, law enforcement and district attorneys launched an aggressive public misinformation and fearmongering campaign calling for reversal of the new law.

Once we look past the inflammatory rhetoric, we see the truth: bail reform is working. Thousands of legally innocent people have been reunited with their families. Fewer people have suffered the horror of losing their homes, their jobs and their everyday lives due to their inability to afford bail. People are returning to court and getting the services and supports they need. And despite what the opposition would have you believe, public safety has not been compromised.

Yet the governor is claiming he will not pass a budget unless it includes roll-backs to the bail reform, a misguided effort that in this time of crisis now puts thousands of lives at risk. Our jails are quickly becoming coronavirus hotspots that threaten the health and safety all who come into contact with them. Just this week the first cases were found on Rikers Island, where conditions are ripe for the coronavirus to explode throughout the population. We should be single-mindedly focused on clearing jails out as soon as possible, not returning to a place of recklessly cycling people in and out of jam-packed, unsafe and unsanitary cells for low-level charges they may not have even committed..

I come to this fight as a foot soldier in the urgent war for better public school funding. The thing that anyone who spends time in this fight can tell you is that mass incarceration and the crippling disinvestment in our public schools, particularly in poor, black and Latinx communities, have gone hand in hand for decades, and are simply two sides of the same hateful coin.

New York spends $70,000 per person held in prison and just $22,000 per public school student. Yet almost every year since it was determined in 2012 by the state’s highest court that the state was vastly underfunding our public schools, our governor and legislative leaders have cried poor when asked to start funding the $3.8 billion still owed our schools. While schools literally crumble from decay and outdated infrastructure, jails and prisons have been funded, constructed and expanded.

Instead of investing in the education of poor and disadvantaged children, we’ve chosen to invest in a prison-industrial complex that locks them up. In the face of decades of underfunding and with schools now pushed to the brink by necessary but unexpected school closures, it’s time to reverse that equation and take the millions we will save from our historic bail reform law and invest it in our schools.

In 2018, community organizations and progressive groups delivered the Democratic Party a triple blue state, followed by the passage of the most progressive raft of legislation ever enacted here in 2019. In 2020, we must keep up the momentum and focus on reaping a harvest that is real, lasting and mightily overdue for so many vulnerable New Yorkers. We cannot let it wither on the vine. In this time of crisis, if we help state Democrats keep their eyes on the prize, together we can all take the next great step forward for our children, our communities and our state.

Nixon, an activist, ran for governor of New York.