Efforts are under way to help former prisoners regain rights and participation in their communities.
Leading the effort is Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC). It has established a policy academy to increase civic participation by formerly incarcerated people, both locally and statewide, reports San Francisco Bay View.
“We must ensure our voices are heard in the hallways of government as well as on the street,” declared LSCP Executive Director Dorsey Nunn.
Thiswas the theme shared in a training program by 50 people at the Watts Labor Center in Los Angeles in February.
Nunn said he and several community organizers “wanted to frame public policy work as an additional important way to fight for the ones we love. Unfortunately, it is also a method we don’t use often enough.”
“The day gave important background on mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on communities of color, as well as information about legislative advocacy, community organizing and the California legislative process,” the newspaper reported.
In addition, “Two role-playing sessions – a legislative meeting and a committee hearing – gave attendees a chance to enact what they were learning.”
“As a formerly incarcerated black man who has been struggling for over 40 years, I recognize that my status as a formerly incarcerated person oppresses me as much as the status of black people oppressed them during slavery or the Jim Crow eras,” Nunn said.
The incarceration rate per 100,000 is six to 10 times that of whites and three to four times that of Latinos, Nunn said. “I am more likely to be assaulted or murdered. The system comes for me more often than others and I am not only incarcerated but also disempowered, then and now,” he added.
“I know that, as a result of our conviction histories, $57 billion to $65 billion in earning and spending will be lost to the community,” Dunn said.
To advance a public policy agenda, Dunn and the organizers said, “We need to establish an apparatus to train formerly incarcerated people, their families and loved ones, so we can develop a more effective approach to lobbying and advocacy.”
According to Dunn, there are “Over 40,000 policies nationally precluded our reentry and the full and equal restoration of our rights.”
