Bail fund group gets Columbia protesters out of jail, and they’ve got more work ahead
A grassroots group who organized a bail fund for protesters arrested over the past week in Columbia says it has spent more than $30,000 to release 10 protesters from jail since May 30. But the group’s work won’t end at the jailhouse.
The group also plans to help connect protesters with legal services and resources, organizers say, and several local lawyers have offered pro bono, or free, legal services for some of the people who were arrested.
“First of all, protesting is a right. It’s a basic human right,” said Kym Smith, one of the local bail fund organizers who has spent hours at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center over the past week helping release detained protesters. “And second of all, if we really want change, we need people to stay in the street. ... We’re really working together as a community to keep this movement going.”
Days of protests in Columbia and across South Carolina and the nation have stemmed from outrage over the killing of a Minneapolis black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police. Floyd’s death has heightened longstanding anger over systemic racism and police brutality toward minorities in particular, with many protesters calling for radical changes in policing and justice across the country.
Smith, a socialist, ultimately wants to see the abolition of police and prisons, she said.
“A lot of grassroots organizations are coming together and saying, ‘This is deplorable. We don’t want people in prison and jails.’ We don’t want to give money to the system, but we still want to get people out,” Smith said. “We can take care of each other. ... We’ve never needed policing. It’s a racist system and comes from racist intentions. We don’t need it.”
Around 60 people have been arrested in Columbia as a result of the protests, the vast majority of them charged with violating the city’s emergency curfew, according to the Columbia Police Department. Other, more severe, charges against some protesters included looting, carrying weapons, inciting riot and aggravated breach of peace.
Some protesters were released from jail on personal recognizance bonds, meaning they did not have to pay money to be released but promise to reappear in court. Others faced wide-ranging bond amounts.
The bail group paid as little as $232.50 and as much as $15,000 to have individual protesters released from jail, according to Julie Edwards, one of the group’s organizers. The group has paid a total of $30,157.50 in bonds, Edwards said.
Some detainees paid their bonds through other means outside the bail group.
For several days last week, the bail group took names of people who had been arrested during protests and scrolled through jail intake records to identify protesters. And then they showed up at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, asking for and paying the bond amount for protest detainees who had not already been released. Some of the detainees did not even know the bail group was coming to get them out, Smith said.
“Not only that, we’re giving them rides, food and water, a change of shirts,” Smith said. “We had someone in there for 30 hours and, like, they’re just so happy that we were there, and not just bonding them out and leaving them there.”
The bail group intends to continue its work so that protesters can continue theirs, Smith said.
The Columbia bail fund is accepting donations through Cash App and Venmo through the user handle “sodacitybail” on both platforms. Anyone who would like to request or offer assistance through the group can call 803-602-4589.
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 4:21 PM.
