While many women will spend this Mother's Day with their children, not everyone can be with mom this weekend. Activists in Phoenix have raised at least $16,000 to help bail out impoverished mothers behind bars.
LUCHA and the ACLU of Arizona marched and held a vigil on Friday at the Fourth Avenue Jail in Phoenix to free Arizona moms in time for Mother’s Day. Jane Thomas was among the marchers. She said she was in jail for a week because she was unable to pay a $5,000 bond for an unpaid jaywalking ticket that turned into an arrest warrant.
"There’s thousands of stories like that, you know and it’s so inconvenient and people are losing their kids," Thomas said. "I mean people’s kids have to be picked up and put in foster care. When the mother gets picked up there’s nobody for their kids- to keep their kids or anything. Those kids go to foster care.”
The mothers that the organizers sought to help were not convicted of crimes, but were only in jail because they couldn’t afford their bail amounts.
