Politics can be boring. I know. It's impossible to follow all the races and be informed on all the positions. Some races seem more important. The governor's race gets all the glamour: news pieces, tv spots, editorials, interviews galore. We're almost all aware of the congresssional and state house candidates (at least in our little area), plastering our neighborhoods with leaflets, pamphlets, door hangers, and yard signs. But no race - no race - has more impact on the lived reality of citizens than the District Attorney. These are the people who have incredible power and latitude in prosecuting our laws. When we look at the state of the American prison system, out incarcerating notoriously oppressive nations like China and Russia, maybe we think we need to do better or wonder if Americans are really that much more prone to crime. Hint: they're not. The DA has direct bearing on our overcrowded and overfunded prisons. The DA has discretion on prosecuting crimes, whether seeking prison time for local activists or trying to hold the powerful accountable .More locally, when we look at our own patch of planet and realise that our state is set, for the first time its history, to pass the $1B budgetary mark on the backs of increased minor drug possession and incarceration of women, we have to pause and ask: what the hell are our state district attorney's doing?
