Local advocacy groups are calling on Joe Biden to issue mass pardons before leaving office
The Philadelphia Inquirer, 12/10/24: “Progressive advocacy groups and organizations across Philadelphia and Pennsylvania signed on to an open letter calling on President Joe Biden to issue mass pardons before leaving office.
The letter, released Friday and signed by 100 organizations nationwide, urges Biden to grant clemency to 10,000 pending petitions that the document cites as connected to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Biden supported both pieces of legislation and was a primary sponsor of the 1994 crime bill during his time in the U.S. Senate.
Biden’s support for these bills and others ‘have severely harmed Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poorly-resourced communities around the country for a generation, you have a moral and social obligation to repair these harms inflicted on our communities,’ the signatories said in the letter, signed by state and local organizations, including Pennsylvania’s Working Families Party, Abolitionist Law Center, 215 People’s Alliance, Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, and Pittsburgh’s 1Hood Power.”