By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 10 years ago

Quick hit: Marissa Alexander won’t be able to spend Thanksgiving with her family

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The sentencing of Marissa Alexander to 20 years for shooting at the wall to scare off an abusive husband provoked national outrage. And Alexander was granted a new trial that will take place in March 2014. So why is this 32-year-old mother still in jail? 

It should be unbelievable and shocking, but it’s tragically consistent with Marissa Alexander’s experience with the criminal justice system. Even Alexander’s ex-husband, who is the alleged victim of the shooting, wants Alexander to be out on bond until her trial in the spring. And yet a judge postponed her bail hearing and the District Attorney maintains that Alexander should be denied her freedom. Why? As Joy Reid explains at The Grio, it’s because of Angela Corey, the Florida DA, politics and PR.

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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