Right now, all over the country, people are being arrested, thrown into private prison company vans under dreadful and dangerous conditions, driven out of state. and then held for days, weeks, even months in jail. And what is their crime? A mother forgot to pay parking tickets; a family owed additional payments on a rental car, a father owed additional payments on a rental car, funeral expenses, and many other debts, and families find themselves thrown into America's debtor prisons, where they are held until they pay or agree to pay whatever a creditor says they owe.

We are the Ervin family, JoNina and Lorenzo, a couple of seniors in their 60's, and are victims of this illegal debtor system ourselves, and face arrest for failing to pay rent and continue to live in substandard housing in Memphis. We had lived in Faronia Square Townhomes for over five years, with no real problems, but when a new management co. took over in 2015, they began harassing them for no cause, and refusing to make repairs to our apartment.

The landlord used the police to spy on us, gave false reports against us to the police, and even tried to make us waive our rights to police entry to our apartment and other tenants. We refused. We were committing no crime, but we had been activists for civil rights and against the police murder of several civilians. Our activism and criticism made us enemies of the local government.

We then decided that we could take no more, and in accordance with the state landlord-tenant act, gave them 30 days notice that we were leaving because of their failure to make repairs and their harassment. The response from management was threats of a lawsuit for thousands of dollars (allegedly $1,888.00 + unspecified legal expenses), for "breaking the lease."

We finally did move to Kansas City, MO. in March of this year, but recently was served with legal papers by the landlord's attorney, saying that we were being sued, and that if we did not come back and pay them, a "capias bond" would be issued to arrest us, and physically drag us to a Tennessee court and hold us in jail there. This is happening to many people in the USA, but we want to fight back and end this system. We need money for an attorney to fight our case, but to also bring a civil rights lawsuit to help us get a federal court decision that this entire debtor prison system is unconstitutional. Won't you help us by making a donation to our legal defense fund? We don't have the money to pay the alleged debt, nor do we have funds for paying an attorney.

Your donations will help, not only ourselves, but those like us, including those who have already been railroaded to jail to demand that they pay debts.