Paaarrttay!

Good morning! Just a little update about yesterday. I spent most of the day doing a little bit more research on my topic and think I have finally hit on something interesting. Basically, there is a federal mandate that says that if a child is in state custody for 15 out of 22 months termination proceedings automatically start, unless that child is placed with a family member during that time. Unfortunately, it's very difficult for immediate or extended family to get funding like a normal foster family would for a child that is placed with them, so statistically it's pretty uncommon for a family member to offer to care for a child in lieu of foster care. What this really means is that for women especially, any sentence over 2 years pretty well means that you will lose your child, unless you have a family member that is willing and able to care for them in your absence. SO, this is an interesting little catch 22 for me in the law, especially since often times even non violent crimes such as drug offenses are subject to sentences longer than 2 years in Texas. I'm not sure what sort of position or angle we'd look at here, but it seems like there could be a few options that will at least mitigate the issue. Additionally, it looks like I'll be submitting lots of open records requests regarding women and healthcare in prisons. We're also looking to see if healthcare requests are routinely denied by guards to the detriment of women in the system. Interesting stuff right? I'm all about keeping families together when practical and making sure every person has a right to basic healthcare. 

Ok, now onto the parties! The Texas session ended Monday, so there is pretty much a party every night in Austin to celebrate. Last night there were 2 fun ones that I attended. It was really nice to meet other people in the advocacy community and hey, a free beer is nice too! Here are a few pictures from early on in the evening. 

A few of the ACLU girls. Apparently, there is some chatter going around that the ACLU has the cutest interns this year. I'm all for having cute, smart summer friends! Also, it was really funny to find out that everyone in this picture are all water signs. We all get along really well, so it was no surprise to us! 

The second party was at an ACLU supporters home. He had a rockin garden and some really neat artifacts in this house. We thought they were joking with us when they said the address is 1600 Pensylvania Avenue and is known as the 'other white house', but it really was. The owner had all sorts of fun memorabilia from the big white house and commentary on his white house in texas.