Join Our Fall Trainings!
Dear Court Watch Community,
This summer, our Courtwatchers have been active in criminal courts across the city, watching over 1400 arraignments. We have continued to see the bail reform rollback known as the “harm on harm” provision be weaponized to set bail on otherwise non-bail-eligible offenses, witnessed judges abusing their discretion to set bail beyond any consideration of a person’s likelihood to return to court, and seen judges constantly disregarding the law that requires them to consider whether setting bail would pose undue hardship.
New Training Dates
Join us! We are hosting two Intro to Court Watch training sessions this fall.
On Tuesday September 16th, we are hosting our first in-person training since 2019! The training will be from 7-9:30pm at Archestratus in Greenpoint. This will be a combined Intro to CWNYC and BailWatch training session, and will cover everything you need to get involved as a court watcher. You can see more details and sign up for this in person offering at this link.
On Tuesday October 14th from 7:30-9pm, we will be hosting a session of our virtual Intro to Court Watch training. This is the first session of our two-part CWNYC training series, covering a brief history of mass incarceration & abolition, the NYC court system, why criminal court watching is important and how you can get involved! After this training, you can also then sign up for the second session of our training, a tactical session which goes into detail on the logistics of how to join our arraignments watching campaign. You can sign up at this link!
If you’ve already taken our training, please consider forwarding this to a friend or two who might be interested in this work, and sharing our post about the trainings on Instagram and BlueSky!
Immigration Court Watching
We continue to be horrified by what is happening in immigration courts across the city and country. All of these carceral systems are connected and must be abolished. Our focus continues to be criminal courts, where the ICE dragnet begins for many. If you are interested in supporting immigration-related actions, two of many organizations doing great work in the space are Immigrant ARC and the New York Immigration Coalition!
In Solidarity,
CWNYC