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#FreeBlackMamas Fundraises For Black Moms Who Can’t Post Bail On Mother’s Day

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, activists and organizers are rallying around a cause for mothers who face lock-up.

In the third annual #FreeBlackMamas campaign, the National Bail Out collective is collecting donations to free Black moms who can’t afford bail for Mother’s Day.

According to a tweet sent out by the collective:

“80% of women in jail are mothers. Last year, we bailed out 150+ mamas to reunite them with their families for .”

The group then posted a video with one Black mom telling her story.

 

As of Friday afternoon, National Bail Out announced that they’ve freed 70 mamas in 22 cities. Over the course of the day, they’ve been posting touching clips of activists welcoming mamas free from jail.

 

Even certain celebs are getting behind the cause with Raheem DeVaughn announcing his donation on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxRvNCujMTK/

 

National Bail Out describes themselves as “a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration. We are people who have been impacted by cages — either by being in them ourselves or witnessing our families and loved ones be encaged. We are queer, trans, young, elder, and immigrant.”

Ending cash bail has become a rising issue in the larger effort to end mass incarceration. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, more than 500,000 people who haven’t been convicted of a crime are detained before their trial. Many are detained in local jails because they can’t pay the bail amounts. The median bail amount for a felony is $10,000 which is about eight months of income for a typical person detained because they can’t afford bail. According to recent studies, Black and Latinx folks are more likely than White people to be detained without bail, and in situations where bail is granted, it’s often set at a significantly higher rate for people of color.

According to an NAACP fact sheet, Black women are also incarcerated at twice the rate of White women and a 2010 study showed that one in nine Black kids have an incarcerated parent, which could often lead to disruptive living situations for the kid or the missing of important childhood events.

For folks interested in the #FreeBlackMamas cause, the National Bail Out collective provides a donation link here.

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