Help Reason Help Individuals Crushed by the State
Your donations make it easier for us publicize so very many cases of outrageous injustice
During Reason's annual Webathon, in which we ask our most loyal customers to consider making a tax-deductible donation to the 501(c)3 nonprofit that makes our print and pixels and audio and visuals possible, it has become a tradition to showcase a category of our work that, perhaps counter-intuitively for the purposes of fundraising, has the very worst effects on end-user blood pressure.
I am talking, of course, about those many, many, MANY cases of undeserving individuals tasting the crushing boot of an unforgiving state. Pop your favorite beta blocker, keep your tranquilizers, and prepare to emit steam. BUT FIRST!
Thanks to a generous challenge grant from Reason Torchbearer Daniel Shuchman, every $1 you donate turns into $2 until the little orange-box thingie gets to $439,000.
Won't you please donate to Reason right the hell now?
"This is your chance," Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum tweeted Friday, near the bottom of an infuriating thread, "to take a stand against vengeful officials who abuse the law to punish people for constitutionally protected speech."
Sullum was referencing a piece that Reason began covering way back in 2017, continuing all the way to last month: A citizen-journalist in Laredo, Texas, named Priscilla Villarreal, was arrested and charged with two felony counts of "misuse of official information" for the journalistically (and constitutionally) basic act of asking cops for factual details about some deadly incidents. Villarreal's case, in which the rights-offending officers have been protected by the odious legal doctrine of Qualified Immunity, has gone all the way up to the Supreme Court (Sullum joined a court brief in her support).
Watch Billy Binion's video report about Villarreal's case, and note that, as Sullum says, "Given the tendency of cops and prosecutors to abuse the law in service of grudges against people who annoy them, there are bound to be more cases like these, and you can be confident that Reason will be there to explain the stakes."
Please donate to Reason for more coverage like this!
"During the height of the pandemic summer of 2020," Eric Boehm wrote in our March 2024 issue, "the proprietors of the Burning Bridge Tavern worked with local officials in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, to host a series of outdoor gatherings for the community." You'll never guess what happened next!
Burning Bridge got slapped with a bunch of citations by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB), of course, but the real gut-punch came during liquor-license renewal time:
Turns out, over the past two years the PLCB has pushed dozens of Pennsylvania establishments that racked up pandemic-related citations to sign "conditional licensing agreements" to renew their liquor permits. In some cases, those agreements have forced the sale of licenses—but in most cases, as with Burning Bridge, they've added additional conditions to the license that could prevent a future renewal from being approved.
Those renewal-conditions can have knock-on effects such as making insurance ruinously expensive. All for the sin of providing some much-needed community during a time of social isolation and government overreach. Boehm's article, you'll be happy to know, was read into the record at a hearing of the Pennsylvania Senate.
Please donate to Reason for more crtiques of the moralistic licensing state!
Reason's Christian Britschgi likes to defend the little guy while filling the rest of us with white-hot rage. How about the Ohio pastor who was (once again!) criminally charged for sheltering homeless people in his church? Or the California couple whose 22-foot-tall mobile home was deemed by the California Coastal Commission as being six feet too high for optimum nearby beach-viewing, so had to be torn down? Or the winery in otherwise homelessness-pocked Santa Clara County that was fined $120,000 for allowing the vineyard manager and family live in a trailer on the property?
Please donate to Reason to help Christian Britschgi uncover zoning horrors like this!
Billy Binion is a one-man heart attack-enabler. There's the family that was wrong-house flashbang-grenaded by the FBI yet could not sue for damages; the man who served two years on bogus charges allegedly cooked up by a corrupt prosecutor who ordered incriminating evidence be destroyed and yet was granted immunity from suit. The small nonprofit that, because it owned $2,543 in back property taxes, had its property seized by the city and sold to a private investor. The woman who owed $3,863 in property taxes, then had the county seize her home, sell it, and pocket a profit of $102,636. The list goes on, and on, and on.
Please donate to Reason to keep Billy Binion hot on the trail of governmental misconduct!
C.J. Ciaramella specializes in criminal injustice cases, such as cops beating up a deaf guy, an officer shooting a blind and deaf dog, a couple having $8,000 and their firearms seized over a misdemeanor drug possession raid, and government being gratuitously cruel to families whose loved ones die behind bars.
Last but not at all least, Lenore Skenazy is the single greatest source for AYFKM stories springing from that gruesome intersection between helicopter parenting and the carceral state. Three choice headlines from the last 12 months: "Mom Jailed for Letting 10-Year-Old Walk Alone to Town," "Cops Called on 8-Year-Old Child for Being Outside," and "Parents Investigated for Letting 7-Year-Old Get a Cookie From the Store."
Donate to Reason so Lenore Skenazy can fight for free-range parenting!
There is no journalistic enterprise in the United States that does more to highlight individual cases of injustice at the hand of an overweening state. Heartbreaking/infuriating as these stories are, they also occasionally lead to actual justice for the victims, and even changes in law; all while creating more new libertarians who can't believe we live in a country like this.
Help us create a world where peaceable people can live free without fear of having their person or property aggressed by the deadly-force monopolist.
