Tomorrow is the 28th and with the day off of work for the national holiday of memorial day it is a perfect opportunity for many of us to make a final push collecting signatures while we are attending events and spending time with family. For some of us who have the time off of work you may also want to visit a few public areas where signatures can be collected. Currently we have collected just under 5,000 signatures as of today including online and printed signatures that were sent to me over the past month. I am extremely thankful and proud of everyone who took the time to forward links and spread petitions. As a body of individuals supporting this campaign we collected over 5,000 signatures over the course of 6 weeks. Initiative petitions usually have 3-6 months to collect signatures. By the time our team realized that the bill was introduced and had been referred to the committee we had much less time to organize but a lot of important work has been done over these past couple of months.
We woke up the legislators who were sleeping on this bill
Criminal Justice Reform bills HB 5665-7 were introduced in February and to date have made no progress toward become laws. Many bills like these are introduced in the beginning of the year, are referred to a committee and then die there but these bills were kept alive with our organizing. For every single one of the 2,222 signatures that have been collected on https://sawarimi.org/archives/1775
an email was sent to every single member of the Law and Justice Committee including Chairman Kesto, many of you have received a response from him. This type of email blasting is what keeps legislators aware of the bill. In addition to waking up legislators, many residents of Michigan had no idea that Good Time was being brought back on the table for inmates incarcerated in our state. People were completely unaware prior to being asked to sign the petition and now that people know we cannot forget. This bill will apart of the house’s bills to be debated on until it passes or dies. We are the force that makes the difference behind HB 5666 fate. We must continue to remind our representatives of our support of this bill and continue to spread the word of the petition in our areas.
Keep Sharing the Link
Many have asked and please be aware that I will be collecting signatures beyond the May 30th deadline. The May 30th deadline is important for submitting signed documents to the Board of Canvassers. On May 29th I will be counting up the amount of signatures that we have thus far (so please scan and send over your final petition documents TOMORROW) and if we have over the limit of 250,000 then I will be able to turn in the initiative petition so that we can propose new legislation. When the signatures are approved then we will be able to add Good Time to the state ballot for November’s elections. Currently have just under 5000 signatures. I will send a final count on the 29th of how many were collected in total. Reguardless, if we don’t get the amount needed I will continue collecting signatures online at
https://sawarimi.org/archives/1775 in preparation for next year.
What If We Don’t Get it, WHAT’S NEXT?
Beginning in June we will continue the Good Time campaign from another angle. With the election of our next state governor we must pay attention to which candidates support Good Time and are active in criminal justice reform. Currently I am collecting responses from candidates and will be posting an article summary of their responses. Please stay tuned.
Also if the Good Time bill does not go through this year, beginning March 2019 we will re-run the Good Time Bill Campaign. With the 50000 signatures that were collected if each individual collects at least 60 signatures then we would be well beyond the goal required to get it onto the ballot. Based upon the work that we’ve completed this far I’m confident that good time will receive a hearing in the house this year. Here is a portion of the reply that I received from Rep. Kesto in response to our campaign,
“in regard to House Bills 5665-5667. At this time with our busy schedule in committee, we do not yet have a set date for any of the criminal justice reform bills or any other bills referred to our committee to be evaluated. We will be reviewing these bills in the coming weeks”
I will continue to push for the committee to set a date for a hearing. Also, recent legislation, Bipartisan Reform Bill, passed on Federal level. This is great progress in that the Bipartisan Reform Bill provides some much needed improvements to the criminal justice system: higher cap on good time credits, increased budget for programming etc. However, this bill only directly affects those incarcerated within the federal system. Those incarcerated in Michigan under the state system still do not receive any good time credits and these are the individuals that we are fighting for with the HB 5666. I urge everyone please do not settle on this campaign to bring back good time until the moment your loved one calls you with an updates on his/her good time credits being awarded. This is a fight that many inside have tried to suppress with rumors that it’s already passed or that its ‘waiting on the governor’s desk to sign’ and while we wish that this is the case sadly it’s not. As the bill continues to wait in the committee our loved ones continue to wait in their cell, with every day that the bill waits, inmates wait and this is what I hope our legislators will think about as they take their time.
- 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at Biggby located at 1001 Welch Rd. in Commerce Charter Township.
- 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Biggby located at 1001 Welch Rd. in Commerce Charter Township.
Many have asked for updates on this bill and all updates in the form of articles related to Michigan’s Good Time Campaign can be found here:
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