Colin Kaepernick’s Million Dollar Pledge Tracker: $910,000

10K a day for TEN DAYS!

Day ONE Of Ten:

Colin Kaepernick and Kevin Durant will donate $10,000 each to De-Bug in San Jose, CA

Colin Kaepernick’s Donation: $10,000

Celebrity Match: Kevin Durant ($10,000)

Organization: SV De-Bug – San Jose, CA

Silicon Valley De-Bug is a community organizing, advocacy, and a multimedia storytelling organization based out of San José, California. Since its’ inception in 2001, De-Bug has been a platform for Silicon Valley’s diverse communities to impact the political, cultural, and social landscape of the region, while also becoming a nationally recognized model for community-based justice work.

De-Bug’s advocacy work is an expression of our community organizing directions, and often where the story-telling work is applied. Their advocacy work comes in the form of goal-oriented campaigns aimed at making system-wide changes that can measurably change the lives of those within De-Bug as well as the larger community. Their campaigns have been local policy-setting, state legislation, and moving the national political landscape. In 2017 they had active campaigns in bail reform, jail reform, police accountability, housing rights, and challenging the immigration and criminal justice nexus. 2016’s campaigns and their outcomes can be found at debugsanjose.org

Total Amount: $20,000

Both Kevin Durant and Colin Kaepernick are donating $10,000 to SV De-Bug! Their donations will specifically pay for:

* $5,000 – Travel stipends for families to visit their loved ones in prison. 

Some De-Bug families make the weekly trek (ranging from 4-6 hours, some even 8) to visit their loved ones in the prisons.  Stipends would cover gas, food, and motel stays in some circumstances.

* $8,000 – Youth Right to Counsel Public Education Campaign

This year, California signed into law SB 395, which increased the protections of young people when in the custody of police. De-Bug was a co-sponsor of the bill, along with other organizations.  However, the strength of this implementation is based on the youth’s knowledge of these rights. We would use this funding for a community roll-out targeting youth including shareable videos on social media, posters in the schools, and downloadable images they can save on their phones.  Resources would also pay for youth organizers to create and lead this campaign.

* $4,000 Community Release Project

De-Bug has pushed for, and won, unprecedented changes in the bail system in Santa Clara County — challenging the practice of money bail, in which freedom is based on how much money you have. One concept that was created through De-Bug families in this effort is the Community Release Project — a way for someone who is detained pretrial to be released without paying bail, and getting the support of a community organization. This is also an alternative to system created supervision, such as ankle monitoring. If we are able to make this work, it may represent a way for counties across the country to reduce their reliance on money bail, and also not simply replace detention with out of custody system supervision. And it connects people to the strength of the community. And while we have approval from the County Board of Supervisors to try to implement the concept, we need to conduct some research to know how to best operationalize the idea. Funding would support De-Bug staff to interview people who were and are currently being detained pretrial. We will find our what services and support should be matched with these needs to ensure that our Community Release Project is as successful as possible.

* $3,000 Day In Court Campaign

This is part of our work to end money bail — both locally and statewide (we are cosponsors of the California Money Bail Reform Act. We developed a public education campaign called “Day in a California Court” where we have grassroots organizers, who have personally experienced the injustice of money bail, sit in an arraignment court in their county. They then write blog pieces of what they see – the bail amounts, the judge’s lack of consideration, the families waiting in the courtroom pews. We are planning on creating videos about the authors, and having this statewide. We will then hold community forums around endig money bail, that is based on the real stories of people who have carried the burden of that broken pretrial system. The idea to show the injustice of money bail in local county courts – that happen everyday, yet people often don’t see what happens in these courts. We have a few counties up on a placeholder website: dayincacourt.org. Resources would cover costs for organizers to write and produce videos for the project and organize community action forums.

For more action, check out their website: www.siliconvalleydebug.org