Women's March Florida Daily Action 3.28.17

#WomensMarchFlorida with #Everytown and #MomsDemandAction March 28 2017 Emergency Daily Action!

The Florida Senate recently passed a bill intended to make its already robust Stand Your Ground law even more friendly to people who say they killed in self-defense.

Under the current law, someone in this situation can avoid a trial if he proves at a pretrial hearing that he was acting in reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm. The new Republican-sponsored bill would flip the burden of proof. It would make the prosecution responsible for proving that someone who used deadly force instead of retreating from an attack was not behaving reasonably. If the prosecution could not do so, the killer would walk free.

The American legal system’s handling of violent self-defense has long favored white, property-owning men. Nonwhite, female, poor or gender-nonconforming people have always been more likely to be punished for defending themselves and less likely to see the courts come to their aid when they are harmed.

Today, our moms will be testifying in opposition to Open Carry in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We feel like we may have the votes for the bill to fail in committee. The meeting is at 3pm today and we have been driving calls to Senate Judiciary members since yesterday.

An incredibly urgent matter is the expansion of Stand Your Ground in FL. This has passed committees in both chambers and has been voted on by the Senate. Its next stop is the house. Read more about it : https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/opinion/a-stand-your-ground-expansion-that-expands-inequality.html?_r=0

We are trying to convince house leadership to send the bill to appropriations for review. This is our best chance to derail the bill. We have testified in every committee that this expansion of SYG will burden prosecutors and overwhelm the courts costing taxpayers money while exacerbating the disproportionate impact SYG has on communities of color.

Today, RIGHT NOW, text FLORIDA to 644-33 will connect callers to a recording explaining that we want to ask house leadership to send the bill to appropriations for review and then connect them to either the Speaker of the House, the Minority Leader or the chair of the appropriations committee.

Follow up by tweeting this : @WMW_Florida stands w @MomsDemand txt 64433 to send Stand Your Ground Bill to appropriations cease injustice against vulnerable communities

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