We welcome the planned commemoration in Washington, D.C. this year but we also feel that the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington needs to serve as a vehicle for advancing struggles for justice on the ground-floor in every community
Transformative Justice and Mass Incarceration: Can Faith Communities Help Create a New Frame?
Rev. Peter Laarman: A safe society is first and foremost a just society. In that respect we have an awfully long way to go. Let’s not waste any more time.
Sheila Kuehl on Prop 30
Sheila Kuehl: The approach adopted by this measure is like holding a gun to your head and shouting “Stop me before I hurt somebody!”
Sister Giant: A New Age for Politics
Dick Price & Sharon Kyle: Marianne Williamson, the spiritual activist and best-selling author, plans to bring a new consciousness to politics with the two-day Sister Giant conference she is organizing for November 10 and 11.
Dollars and Detainees: Examining For-Profit Detention – August 15th
A recent report published by The Sentencing Project, Dollars and Detainees: The Growth of For-Profit Detention, details how harsher immigration enforcement and legislation led to a 59 percent increase in the number of detainees being held by the federal government between 2002 and 2011. It specifically examines how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the […]
Stop and Frisk Policy Not Preventing Crime
Bruce Reilly: The NYPD is stopping more Black and Latino people than actually live in the city, harassing nearly 700,000 people last year alone.Statistics show that the more you Stop and Frisk, the less crime goes down.
Mass Incarceration: Points of Agreement on the Right and the Left
Diane Lefer: When a community sees daily injustice and doesn’t see the rule of law equally applied, it becomes morally and ethically easier to choose to live in a lawless way.
The Cooler Bandits: The New N-Word Is Felon
The Cooler Bandits follows four friends struggling to re-enter society after 20 years in prison, only to confront their future in the old neighborhood.
From Behind Bars to Law School
Bruce Reilly: I came to New Orleans knowing but a few criminal justice activists, legal professionals, and some friends of friends. It was good to have folks who knew I had spent twelve years locked in prison.
Blacks and Obama
Sharon Kyle: Even though blacks in America are suffering more than most during this economic crisis, they are least likely to complain that the Obama administration policies are not benefiting them.
Prison-Based Gerrymandering
Sharon Kyle: Prison-based gerrymandering may result in the loss of both federal dollars and political representation for struggling inner-city districts.
Our Fellow Felons
Hannah Petrie: Even though the rates of drug-dealing and drug-using occurs equally among different races – (think weed here) whites deal to whites, blacks deal to blacks, Hispanics to Hispanics – it’s the people of color who get busted. And once you’re labeled a felon – and denied access to employment, housing, and other rights — your chances of returning to a straight and normal life are extremely low. It is a system designed to keep felons felons.
Private Prisons Spend Millions to Put More People in Jail
Andrea Nill-Sanchez: In Arizona, 30 of the 36 legislators who co-sponsored the state’s controversial immigration law that would undoubtedly put more immigrants behind bars received campaign contributions from private prison lobbyists or companies.
