The civil rights attorney and candidate for Manhattan District Attorney in the United States, Tahanie Aboushi, dedicates her energy and life towards combating the corrupt judicial system in the United States.
A daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Aboushi started venturing into the world of activism at the age of 14 with a mom and a missing father who was sentenced to more than two years into the federal prison in the United States. This parental gap has inspired Tahanie to overpower the same bitter and merciless system via pursuing an education that promotes justice and could equip her lawfully.
“My father was released from prison in his 60s, he had triple bypass surgery, and it was a breakdown in our relationship,” said Tahanie during an interview with the Political Report. “How do we talk about accountability on behalf of the DA’s office for the part we played in that destabilization? It’s extremely difficult to survive, let alone thrive after having come into contact with the justice system,” she added.
Her activism journey started a decade ago in NYC and was shaped rapidly as a reflection of the overlapped inequalities experienced by a good number of assaulted minorities. While residing in Harlem, Tahanie is keen today to form a new policy plan that aims to alleviate the underestimated lives of these minorities who are currently living on the margin of life due to the unfair prevailing situation.
As Tahanie’s parents encouraged her education along with her two siblings, she began attending the Syracuse University College of Law. After her graduation, Tahanie joined Adam, Sampson & Associates and later became a founding member of Aboushi Law Firm along with her two siblings, who are attorneys as well. Tahanie also once mentioned that she is specialized in civil rights law due to the injustice and wrongdoings she has been witnessing in criminal, family, and immigration laws.
“Laws are disproportionately applied for people of color. If the same law was supposed to apply to everybody, we wouldn’t see these disproportionate impacts that are largely ignored,” mentioned Tahanie during her interview with the Political Report.
Through her career persistence and assertiveness, Aboushi was successfully able as an American-Palestinian female to protect the people of New York through altering policies in the FDNY and NYPD. Back during the trump ban, Aboushi led the legal team at JFK Airport, spending four days helping in releasing people detained by CBP.
Recently, Tahanie is striving to decay as many cases as she can via focusing on prosecutions that are a result of life difficulties such as poverty and struggles with mental illness. Thereby, as a candidate of the DA in Manhattan’s election for this year, Aboushi’s plan revolves around banning prosecutions of more than 40 offenses, because she refuses to criminalize drug use, sex work, and many other offenses.
“This is a person who is part of our society that even if got incarcerated, he/she will one day be released and become a vital part of our society, so we will be accountable for the state of this person, his/her family and community,” she said.
In 2020, Tahanie represented countless protestors who were prosecuted for misconduct and resisting arrest during the protests against police brutality. In fact, she says that the charges most of her clients had were similar, and she believes they’re a gateway that allows the officers to put their hands on a person, whether it’s arresting them, beating them up, throwing them to the ground.
“Charges that are used to cover up bad policing or make for easy arrests, we’re going to take that away from them as well,” she added.
As an activist and a feminist, Tahanie makes a distinction in her plan between sex work and rape. According to her, sex work is a consenting engagement between two adults so it shouldn’t be criminalized.
“This is not to be conflated with human trafficking, rape, sexual assault,” she mentioned.
As prisons aren’t an ideal place for rehabilitation, Tahanie believes today that excessive arrests and prosecutions cause more harm than good to the safety of the public and the lives of the prisoners as they traumatize people, tear families apart, suspend or terminate employment, jeopardize immigration statuses and housing access, send children to foster care, while doing nothing to meaningfully support victims.
“In other words, instead of preventing crime, the harms of policing, prosecutions and mass incarceration make crime more likely.”