The US criminal punishment system cannot deliver any "justice." Marissa has already served over a thousand days in jail and prison. She spent another year under strict house arrest wearing an ankle monitor costing her family $105 every two weeks. Marissa fired a warning shot to ward off her abusive husband and no one was injured. For this, she was facing a sixty-year sentence if convicted in her retrial. True justice is not being arrested and taken away from her children, family, and friends. Justice is living a life free of domestic abuse. Justice is benefiting from state protection rather than suffering from state violence. Justice is having a self to defend in the first place.

— We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba, Tamara K. Nopper, Naomi Murakawa (Page 31)