Vote No on the Bail Amendment Questions

Voting is already underway for the spring election here in Wisconsin and I’m behind schedule on this so I’m going to cut to the chase in presenting the key info I think you should know about state referendum questions 1 and 2. If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll go back and read my last 4 posts (starting here) which provide some context for how…

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Harm & Accountability

Okay, at this point I really need to acknowledge something I have not so far: people cause other people real harm and victims and survivors deserve justice. People’s lives are forever changed by violence, financial, and property crimes all the time. It is undeserved and terrible. My focus tends to be on those that have caused harm and I don’t ever want that to minimize…

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Against the Good Guy/Bad Guy Binary

One of the things my work has allowed me to do is get to know people who have done horrible things. Part of my job as a Mitigation Specialist is to have individuals who have committed crimes tell me the story of what they did. I’ve listened to detailed accounts of murders, sexual assault, and the procurement and creation of child pornography that were very…

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I Want to Change How You Think About Crime

I want to change how you think about crime, and if you live in Wisconsin, I want to do it before you complete your ballot for the Spring election. Here in Wisconsin, there is a referendum on our ballot to amend the state Constitution that will change the way judges make bail decisions. It is likely to pass, by a wide margin, in part because…

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Anchors

It’s been awhile since I’ve written here, a little over a year to be exact. I didn’t really plan to let it go that long, but I think there was a lot about 2021 that we expected to go differently. Though I am weary of the challenges we’re living with now and the world feels like mostly a shitshow, I did learn some things in…

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10Q

The Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah begins this Friday at sunset. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and it is the start of a 10 day period of reflection and repentance that culminates on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Yom Kippur is also called “Day of Atonement”. I grew up in the Catholic church, but my husband is Jewish and…

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Nostalgia, The Sopranos, and My Brother’s Privates

When I was a kid, my dad took one or two backpacking trips a year to Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior or the nearby Porcupine Mountains. Despite traveling the same terrain year after year, he always returned with several rolls of film to develop. Many of these, he had developed as slides and from time to time he would haul out a large…

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