Bill Maher makes startling admission to JD Vance about the future of his Democratic support

[Wiz Imp]

28. Darializa Avila Chevalier who won a primary for Congress in NY this week

has called for abolition of prisons. The thing is, though, that she is just one person. I'm not aware of any other Democrats who have called for that. So Maher is applying the opinions of one person and saying it represents evryone in the Democratic party. Talk about dishonest.

Also, the calling for abolishing prisons is a much more complex issue than the people who latch on to it as a soundbite to condemn all Democrats make it out to be. Here's a response from Chevalier when asked about it by the NY Times editorial board. She doesn't directly answer the question, but it's clear that there is more to it than the haters would have you believe.
https://nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/darializa-avila-chevalier-on-housing

Nicole Gelinas
Just speaking of human rights and human dignity, you’ve been a prison abolitionist, a decarceralist. What should happen to somebody who has killed somebody else? I mean, I went to a sentencing last week, a man killed another man, didn’t know the person, just sitting on a stoop, got a 18-year prison sentence. Should that person not go to prison? And what should happen instead?

Darializa Avila Chevalier
So, you know, for prison abolitionists, I think a lot of folks misunderstand what that vision of the world actually is. And it is one that actually centers this question of harm. At the heart of what we’re asking is: What, why is it that there is so much harm in our society?

And how do we, A, prevent it, and B, deal with it when it happens. And as someone who has worked with folks who have been incarcerated, who have felt ostracized, for lack of a better term, by so many facets of our society for being poor, for being Black, for being Latino. I work at a public defender’s office where most of our clients are incredibly poor Black and brown New Yorkers. And for so many, the crimes that they’re being indicted for are crimes of poverty, or the effects of poverty.

And when I think about this question of harm, I think how do we create a society where people feel so safe that they don’t need to pick up the phone and call the police. And when harm does happen, how do we actually create repair? Because what we have right now is a system in whenever harm happens, there’s more harm being perpetrated, not only on the folks who engaged in the harm, but also on the victims of the harm. I’m someone who has actually been the victim of crimes, of violence, and gone to the police as a young person thinking, doing the thing that society told me to do, and all that did was traumatize me more.

Josh Greenman
But what do you do to the murderer though? Or what do you do—

Darializa Avila Chevalier
But and so I’m trying to answer the question, which is that— What we do is that we then put people behind bars in incredibly traumatizing conditions in a context where they cannot actually reflect on the harm that they caused or feel any remorse on that because they’re just trying to survive inside, and they’re being re-traumatized day after day after day while inside. And then when they’re released, they’re bringing that trauma back to our community, and that is having a reverberating effect on everyone in our society. And so as an abolitionist, you know, when you think about this question of harm, we have to think not only about interrupting that cycle of harm but also preventing it from the onset. And part of that has to do with thinking about, what are the systems that actually reduce that harm from happening in the first place?

And I have spoken to clients at public defender’s office where you hear the larger story of what happened, and it was folks who were under so much stress from the conditions that they were facing that they lashed out in a way that was out of character, in ways that they deeply regret. They don’t have a way to actually repair now because they don’t have a pathway towards that. You see folks who just need access to medical care. I had, at one of the jobs I had many years ago, a client who would actually intentionally get arrested because being on Rikers was the only way that he could get access to his bipolar medication. And this is a reflection of a larger failure of our system to actually protect our people from harm, to think about harm in a more expansive way, and actually address it meaningfully and effectively.

Josh Greenman
But, did we answer what happens to the murderer? Do you not incarcerate the murderer?

Darializa Avila Chevalier
You know, again, I’m talking about this question between the distance between the world we want to see and the world that we’re at. And tomorrow, you know, when that instance happens, that [incarceration] is what’s going to happen, right? And I don’t think anyone in society questions that that’s what’s going to happen.

Ben Smith
But can you get a little less abstract? Like she was watching a jury vote on the guy’s guilty, should he be sentenced or not?

Darializa Avila Chevalier
Well, this is what I’m saying is that when that happens, and as someone who has sat in so many courtrooms, to me, all of that is tragic. The fact that the murder happened is tragic. The fact that there was a circumstance in which that could even come to pass is tragic, and all of that is a reflection of systems that allowed that circumstance to be possible. And so, you know, I have always focused my attention on how do we create systems where that’s not even the possibility.