Your spare change could be used to bail out Black prison inmates with the app Appolition.us
Kortney Ziegler, a social engineer who has made many contributions in the past towards projects that empower marginalised people has co-founded an app that will enable you to raise money for bail.
In the past, Ziegler created Trans*H4CK, a platform that enables trans, non-binary, gender-non-conforming, people to gain better access to social services and promotes gender safety.
Appolition.us is an app that is another contribution to his work as a social engineer and to marginalised people. In less than a minute you can connect the app to the accounts you use for your normal purchases, the purchases would be rounded up to the nearest dollar and would automatically donate when you reach $2 in spare change. Users can pause and resume their contributions at their own pace.
Mass incarceration is already a huge problem in America, looking at the statistics from the International Centre of Prison Studies, the United States of America have the highest prison population rate in the world. It holds 21% of the world’s prisoners.
And if that was not bad enough, there is a disproportionate amount of Black people in prison, according to the Center for American Progress:
While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned.
Another way of looking at it is 1 in every 15 African American men is currently incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men, there are more African American men in prison in America that in India, Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Japan, Germany, Finland, Israel and England combined according to Konbini.
These shocking statistics have a detrimental impact on the community: as well as families being torn apart, there are financial strains on people barely getting by.
With the knowledge that prisons are overflowing with black and poor people, and inspiration from National Bail Out, an organisation that raises money and awareness of the inhumane treatments and practices of bail practices, Zielger co-founded the app Appolition and gained awareness of it through Twitter:
Hey Twitter we are two black tech founders raising a seed round of half a million. A simple RT might introduce us to our next angel investor pic.twitter.com/18RZIo0Oyt
— King Kortney (@fakerapper) September 25, 2017
Ziegler’s aim for the app is very heartfelt, he explains:
“Our short term goals are to get as many folks home for the holidays as possible so we hope many folks join the platform for Giving Tuesday and contribute their holiday spending change to those in need.”
Ziegler also knows that his contribution is only a small ray of hope to the effects of the inert justice system and its bail practices. He states:
“Although bail relief via an app isn’t the perfect solution to true abolishment of the prison industrial complex, being able to provide a tiny dent in the system along the way is always important. Supporting the work that prison abolitionists are already doing, is my contribution.”
You can learn more by visiting Appolition.us online.
While this innovative app is a prime example of how to help a community, here are other ways businesses help communities everywhere.
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