Want to fight America’s racist mass-incarceration system? There’s an app for that
The app Appolition automatically collects your spare change to help bail disadvantaged black people out of jail
By Rachel Leah
As a social engineer, Kortney Ziegler is always thinking of new ideas and posting them to his Twitter.
"An app that converts your daily change into bail money to free black people," he tweeted in July.
Like many of his brainstorms, it was a one-off gesture thrown into the digital ether. But something was different about this one. It quickly got hundreds of retweets and affirmations. "I'd sign up!" many users wrote back.
Impressed and inspired by the response, Ziegler decided to make the app a reality.
The result is the web-based service "Appolition," which officially came to life on Nov. 14. Ziegler, along with his co-founders in Atlanta, hoped to reach 200 users by mid-December. As of today, Appolition has close to 6,000. And its current, web-based form is just the beginning. Ziegler says mobile apps for iPhone and Android users are on the way.
Here's how it works: Appolition connects to your bank account and rounds up each purchase you make to the nearest dollar. The spare change is then donated automatically once it accrues to at least 50 cents. By signing in to the website, it takes you to a personal secure dashboard where you can track your contributions to bail relief as you spend. It's both passive — you don't even notice you're using it — and effective.
https://www.salon.com/2017/12/09/want-to-fight-americas-racist-mass-incarceration-system-theres-an-app-for-that/
https://appolition.us
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