photo curtesy of Merrimack College

I’m posting a few resources that will be useful to activists in the coming era. As I find more I’ll add them.

First up by Mariama Kaba:  Compelled to Act #1: 10 Concrete Actions to Take in January 2017. This is a list of concrete actions you can take now in January. As Kaba, known as @prisonculture says, “Every month, I will be posting concrete actions that we can take in the ongoing struggle for more justice. Victoria Safford shared a quote from someone in an essay that I appreciate very much: ‘You know we cannot do this all at once. But every day offers every one of us little invitations for resistance, and you make your own responses.” I love the idea of “little invitations for resistance.’”

Secondly, from Bill Moyers’ website, Preparing for President Trump. Written by Peter Dreier, this is a “10-point plan for activists, politicians, the press and everyday citizens.”

Touched by Mery Streep’s activism, I think we all should read or re-read something I strongly learned putting on plays at Framingham and relearn every article I write: “Art is dangerous”: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Sonia Sanchez in conversation.

I’ve been meaning to share this amazing resource with everyone since the election. It bursts the bubble of who voted for Trump. This is a Syllabus for White People to Educate Themselves  passed on by activists who I trust enormously. Here’s a small piece of the rationale “We need to be thinking about how we are thinking about this election. This sense of comfort, of insulation from the horrors of America, is precisely what this syllabus is meant to disrupt. We, white people, clearly weren’t listening hard enough to people of color, to women, to queer people, to immigrants, to Muslims, to anyone who holds a marginalized identity. This did not come as a shock to many marginalized people. Instead, as a friend of mine put it: “I am hurt but my hurt comes mainly from having my fears proven. Not from surprise. I am so angry because there are so many people who needed this result to prove to them the divide of this country instead of listening to the voices of their token friends. Instead of hearing. Instead of trusting.” Now is the time to hear. Now is the time to educate and propel that education into action.

Finally, a wonderful Prison Abolition Syllabus posted on the African American Intellectual History Society site (AAIHS) and compiled by excellent contributors Dan Berger, Garrett Felber, Kali Gross, Elizabeth Hinton, and Anyabwile Love.

New Addition! A Resistance Manual  from Aditi Juneja from NYU, a project that includes many interesting ways to deal with the new administration and “get educated, get organized, and take action.”

New addition! “The 65 has compiled a set of scripts for over a dozen issues in the progressive agenda. The demands in these scripts aren’t radically left-leaning. That’s intentional. We believe that progress happens slowly, from the middle out. The middle isn’t where we want to end up, necessarily, but it’s where we have to start.”

Please see my newest article on Truthout: “Beyond Revenge: Most Crime Victims Prefer Rehabilitation to Harsh Punishment.”

Here’s how it starts: We all know an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. But for Mothers for Justice and Equality, getting justice has never been about revenge. The Boston-based nonprofit was founded by Monalisa Smith, who lost her 18-year-old nephew, Eric Smith, to gun violence in 2010. Determined to end violence in their communities, the mothers who came together to form Mothers for Justice and Equality recognized early on that many of them had family members who were both perpetrators and victims. They recognized that they needed to take action into their own hands if they were to reduce community violence. More

Jean Trounstine has shared the following video:

DOC_Testimony.MOV

Open

This is why visits for prisoners are so important.

Please read my newest article for The Lowell Sun that is a follow up of the one I wrote last month about Wilfred Dacier also for the Sun: “Why the Massachusetts Parole Board Requires Reform.” It begins:

“This week Gov. Charlie Baker announced plans to enhance services for prisoners with mental health issues at Bridgewater State Hospital, a medium-security prison under scrutiny for mistreating patients. It’s about time we accept that a clinical approach is needed to help troubled prisoners. More than a quarter of the males and more than half the females incarcerated in state prisons have open mental health cases, and that number is even higher in county facilities.

But a clinical approach should also extend to the back end — parole. If you are going into prison with mental health issues, you most likely are coming out with them.” More

John Adams Courthouse, home of the Mass SJC

When I was writing and researching Boy With a Knife, I remember how shocked I was when then-prisoner Karter Reed told me he could not move to lower security until he received a positive parole vote. Yes, he had killed a boy, a tragic murder, by stabbing him in a high school, and Jason Robinson would never be returned to his family. Nothing could change that. But Karter had served fifteen years in an adult prison and come to grips with the horror of his actions. He had earned the right to parole, and in my opinion, was ready for release.

Karter wrote that it was tricky, because although he had engaged in more than forty programs during his years behind bars in his attempt to come to grips with his actions, he knew that the Parole Board often recommended a potential parolee take very specific programs. Some were easier to get into or only available in a lower security setting. But he also knew that lifers were prohibited from moving to a lower security setting if they had not yet received a positive parole vote. This was, if ever, the perfect example of a CATCH 22= “a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.”

You need a program but you can’t get that program because it’s only available in lower security where you cannot reside until you get a positive vote. And OOPS the Parole Board says you can’t get parole until you enroll in said Magical Program.

More than one time Karter had been rejected for moves to lower security because of the categorical response “serious nature of the offense.” Not only did this practice make it hard for potential parolees to prove their worthiness for release, but it also delayed the date of their release from prison.

On August 25, 2016, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued its decision on a case that was built around this dilemma. No longer will teenage lifers—and this ruling does apply to juveniles and not to all lifers—be categorically denied classification to lower security before they get a vote for parole. The SJC ruled that this policy “violated state law, which requires that each case by evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”

According to the SJC, “On September 23, 2014, a classification board unanimously voted that Timothy Deal be placed in a minimum security facility. The board noted that Deal had an objective classification score of four, had “[p]ositive housing/work evaluations,” and was ‘program compliant.’ Seven months later, the assistant deputy commissioner rejected the classification board’s recommendation, citing “code R,” i.e., ‘serious nature of offense.'”

Attorney Barbara Kaban of the Committtee for Public Council Services argued the case before the court and represented Timothy Deal, the lead plaintiff. She said in an interview to Shira Schoenberg for MassLive “There has to be an individualized determination….We want to make sure they have opportunities in prison to mature, grow, and change.”

It seems clear that although the classification score for Deal had been extremely low, it was ignored.The SJC decision noted that prisoners  are evaluated and ranked for classification, given a number of points for each of the following categories (the lowest numbers should get one to less secure facilities):

• severity of current offense
• severity of convictions within the last four years
• history of escapes or attempts to escape
• history of prior institutional violence within the last four years
• number of guilty disciplinary reports within the last twelve months
• most severe guilty disciplinary report within the last eighteen months
• program participation or work assignment

Kaban, in the Mass.live article, was also quoted as saying that now such prisoners won’t be blocked. She said, “My client and others hopefully will have an opportunity to get to minimum security facilities prior to going to the parole board, so by the time they get to the parole board, they will have an opportunity to demonstrate the they’re better able to be released to society.”

The exact wording of the decision makes it clear that the Department of Correction will have to change its ways: “For these reasons, we conclude that the department’s current practice of using discretionary overrides to block objectively qualifying juvenile homicide offenders from placement in a minimum security facility unless and until the juvenile has received a positive parole vote contravenes the language and purpose of G. L. c. 119, § 72B, because it forecloses the individualized consideration of an inmate’s suitability for classification in minimum security.”

As of May, 2016 there were 171 prisoners in state prisons serving sentences for homicide committed while they were kids. They will all be eligible for parole at some point. And no one can any longer be categorically denied a request to move to lower security if they meet the requirements.

More than groups joined ACLU Massachusetts on the amicus brief including Boston College Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project; Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth; Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Harvard Law School; Citizens for Juvenile Justice; Coalition for Effective Public Safety; Communities for People; Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project; Justice Resource Institute; Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Northeastern Prisoners’ Assistance Project; Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts; Roca, Inc.; Roxbury Youthworks, Inc.; Span, Inc.; Dr. Frank DiCataldo; Dr. Robert Kinscherff; and Francine Sherman, Esq.