By Perla Brito
NEW YORK, NY – Latrice Walker, attorney and New York Assemblyperson, promised this week to “begin another hunger strike on Easter Sunday in honor of all the people we spoke to…incarcerated at Rikers pretrial.”
Walker also tweeted, “I visited the Rikers Island jail complex…along with several other New York lawmakers…I came away more motivated than ever to do whatever I can to protect bail reform.”
Civil rights attorney Scott Hechibger said “Latrice Walker—NY Assemblywoman, lawmaker, hero—will soon start *a hunger strike* to stop Governor Kathy Hochul from her sinister plot to kill bail reform,” in response to Walker’s tweet. 
“What Gov. Hochul is proposing goes beyond rollbacks. She wants a wholesale dismantling of bail reform without a legal or empirical basis,” charged Walker.
In fact, the lawmaker linked an article in another Twitter post that was titled “Opinion: More people will die if Hochul rolls back bail reform.”
Walker added “So, I have to do what I have to do to keep New York State from filling jails with Black and brown people. My hunger strike is intended to demonstrate the suffering of the thousands of people from my community who are stuck behind bars without access to care, exercise, quality food or meaningful justice.”
Walker added, “It’s time for the governor to stop with the verbal gymnastics around bail reform. It’s time for investments that support public safety. Locking up more people pretrial does not make us safer.”
