A People's Tribunal: How San Diego’s Pillars of the Community Held the District Attorney Accountable for Racial Disparities in Charging and Sentencing

Editor's Note: On this episode of the De-Bug the System podcast, De-Bug organizer Ana sits down with participatory defense organizer Laila Aziz. Laila and her fellow organizers at Pillars of the Community, a San Diego based organization, held the San Diego County District Attorney accountable for racial disparities in sentencing. How did they do this? They held a People's Tribunal, inspired by movement leaders of the past. With the People's Tribunal, they served their own subpoena to the District Attorney's Office and demanded their attendance to the Tribunal where they laid out the qualitative findings of racial disparity in sentencing in the county, the room filled with pictures of all the young men who were sentenced to die in a California prison. In this conversation, hear where the idea came from, how it went down and what Laila and Pillars thinks is next. Protect Your People!

Quote from this episode:

It's a group of about 8 or 9 of us, and we march up there [to the District Attorney's Office] and we go in. We demand to speak to the District Attorney... And we have a subpoena, the same thing that they use on us to make us go to court when we don't want to go to court. And also on top of that, we had a complaint, the same thing they use, they give to us to complain and tell us all our charges in this complaint. We use their system in certain aspects because we knew they understood that. But also we were taking it out of the courts and into the community, into the people's hands, into the power. ~Laila Aziz

Want to learn more about Pillar's People's Tribunal? Read this article from KPBS