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Forward With Purpose

U.S. Capitol

For two weeks, we waited to see how our nation would show up for inauguration day. Just 14 days separated a moment vital to democracy and one of the most grotesque manifestations of white supremacy in our history.

The images of violence and bigotry will stay with me forever. People taking selfies beside a noose. Confederate flags paraded through the Capitol. Violent white men praying in the Senate’s chambers, affirming their actions in the name of God.

January 6 was the latest installment in white rage, people gripped by hatred and bigotry, lashing out in the false name of liberty.

That day was traumatic. It was a display of hate we’ve known for far too long.

The Capitol riots weren’t an aberration. This is where our country has been, since its inception, starting with the genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of African people; through lynchings and Jim Crow and into the mass incarceration era; to the acts of domestic terror we just witnessed, filmed and broadcast for the whole world to see.

This is our truth. It’s part of who we are as a country.

We turned a page with a new president and reimagined hope — even as we are still in the midst of a collective trauma. We now have to ensure that January 20, 2021, holds its own historical weight. We have to make progress.

There shouldn’t be any doubt that racism and white supremacy have deep roots here. It’s up to us to confront and dismantle the hate.

The change we need demands accountability that repairs harm and changes future actions — of people, institutions, and systems.

We must work to transform our justice system into one that centers race equity as a core value, and builds and strengthens solutions that heal, prevent violence, and create safety.

We witnessed rioters at the Capitol bent on destruction. That destruction cannot deter our progress. We must continue to build power in community. We must continue to create space for those most impacted by race inequity to lay the path toward race equity.

Inaugurations deliver symbols of our aspiration, largely through words. A few offered by the poet Amanda Gordon felt particularly right. Pushing back on the idea of a more perfect union, she said, “We are striving to forge our union with purpose.”

We are steadfast in our purpose: equity for all who have long been denied it.

Thank you for standing with us in pursuit of this.

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Pivoting in this Health Crisis

Flyer for EJUSA-supported work in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

At this point, there isn’t any aspect of life in the U.S. that hasn’t been affected by the pandemic. This is especially true in Black and Brown communities. Covid-19 has magnified every inequity. People are struggling to put food on the table, pay their rent, get high-quality health care, and make sure their kids are getting the education they have the right to.

In those same communities, the local organizations on the frontlines tackling violence and healing community trauma are seeing a growing demand for their services even as the work gets much harder.

These are EJUSA’s partners in our shared mission to reimagine justice. These are the leaders who have built the solutions to violence and trauma that will replace the justice system that relies on prisons, police, and executions. So when we heard what our partners needed to move their work forward, we pivoted on our strategy. We couldn’t meet in person with our allies, but we were able to reallocate more than $17,000 in funding to make sure these organizations could meet their community’s needs. I want to share the impact that this has had.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The Butterfly Society, a volunteer-based anti-domestic violence organization, needed emergency funding to relocate survivors who were forced into isolation with abusive partners. Our funding provided financial assistance for women who had no choice but to leave their homes during the pandemic.

When shelter-in-place orders left households without essentials like food and water, The Bridge Agency Inc. held a “Summer Kickoff Essentials Drive-Through” to essential packages to families. EJUSA contributed $5,000 to the effort.

Another organization, The Healing Circle, could no longer meet in person to continue their community therapeutic sessions and would need more volunteers to support post COVID. EJUSA provided the organization with a Zoom subscription to help continue therapy sessions for the community, and for their team to earn a Mental Health First Aid certification. They will continue to educate and support the community as they address trauma and healing post-COVID, increasing the expansion of this service city-wide.

Rapid City, South Dakota

Journey On, an indigenous-led organization focusing on wellness and healing, needed help to support the city’s homeless population. With funding from EJUSA, volunteers distributed sack lunches and backpacks with nonperishable goods, toiletries, clothing, and other basic necessities.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Avenues for Youth supports young people facing homelessness and the trauma that it produces. With EJUSA’s support, the organization provided children with bus passes and gift cards to purchase food and necessities.

Denver, Colorado

In response to COVID-19, the Colorado Center for Change provided virtual programming for women and young people to support their social and emotional well-being during isolation. EJUSA supported this initiative, as well as care package delivery and rental assistance for families in need.

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The Right to Repair

A poster for the event reads "The Right to Repair: Hope and Healing in the Wake of Violence". The words are white text surrounded by a turquoise box. Behind the text, a black and white photo of two hands holding one another.
Right to Repair Draft 2 (3)

Can you imagine a world where we work together to repair the harm that is caused by violence? Where we work to understand the root causes of violence and deliver healing for all those impacted by harm?

That vision is already taking shape! On Tuesday, November 10, EJUSA hosted "The Right to Repair: Hope & Healing in the Wake of Violence." This panel discussion featured leaders who center healing in their work to transform the justice system.

Katherin Hervey is the director of the award-winning film "The Prison Within" explores these topics through the eyes of men who are incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and violence survivors.

Troy Williams recounts his experiences with restorative justice at San Quentin State Prison in the film. He is now a justice activist and advocate for the power of healing.

Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight is the founder of Mothers in Charge, Inc., a Philadelphia-based organization that supports mothers who have lost their children to violence.

Christine Henderson, manager of EJUSA's Trauma and Healing Network, moderated this dynamic panel on the importance of healing, connection, and acknowledgment of trauma in our system.

We invite you to experience the panel and learn how Troy recognized the prison he built within himself, how Dorothy has guided many survivors to the first true healing they've felt after losing a loved one, and how Katherin's film "The Prison Within" documents the full humanity of those who have caused extreme violence.

WATCH THE FULL PANEL
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A Mover of Mountains

The world lost a giant yesterday. Bill Pelke, founder of Journey of Hope…from Violence to Forgiveness, passed away in his home in Alaska after suffering a heart attack.

Bill is the heart behind the anti-death penalty’s powerful mantra “love and compassion for all of humanity.” He came to this vision — and spread the message to countless people around the world — after his grandmother Ruth was murdered by three teenage girls in 1985.

One of the girls, 15-year-old Paula Cooper, was sentenced to death. People across the globe called for her release. A piece about Paula in The Intercept explains:

“One of Paula’s earliest and most unlikely supporters was an Indiana steelworker named Bill Pelke — Ruth Pelke’s grandson. A young devout Christian and Vietnam veteran, Bill had seen his father scrubbing the blood from the walls and carpet in his grandmother’s house. Yet he soon came to believe that his Nana would not have wanted to see this young girl executed. He was particularly haunted by the memory of Paula Cooper’s own grandfather on the day she was sentenced to die. As he would later recount in a 2003 memoir, neither Paula’s mother or father attended the 1986 hearing, but her grandfather had been escorted out of the courtroom, wailing, ‘They are going to kill my baby!’ Pelke later went to visit him and the two looked at photo albums of Paula and her sister, Rhonda. The girls had grown up amid harrowing abuse and neglect.”

Bill’s heart was so big. His ability to see Paula as a child of God extended to everyone — all of humanity. He built the Journey of Hope as a place for those impacted by violence — murder victims’ family members as well as the families of those executed and those wrongly sentenced to death row and later released — to share their stories so others could see there were better solutions to violence. There are ways for us to heal together, when we are able to extend love and compassion.

Long before I met Bill his reputation was firmly established in the anti-death penalty world. He’d written a memoir, appeared on “Oprah,” and travelled the globe to share his message. I had the great pleasure to work directly with Bill in 2013 to help plan a national conference against the death penalty. It was amazing to see him in action. He was a visionary. Bill wasn’t concerned about details like time or money (he left me to fret about those things). He just knew what needed to be brought into the world. And in no small part due to his charismatic personality, it almost always worked out.

Bill was so beloved because he was so loving. His vision for the world wasn’t academic or removed…he lived it. In his gruff steelworker voice he would tell us, “I love you.”

We loved him back fiercely.

I’m going to miss Bill. I’m going to laugh at the ways he drove me crazy — the time I created a meticulous plan, wrote it out for him to implement, walked him through the steps, and when it was time for executing the plan he turned to the group and said, “Now Colleen will tell you what we do next.”

Not the plan. Didn’t matter. Bill wasn’t worried about taking credit or being in charge or stressing about the details. He had faith it would all work out. Because of his vision and faith and tireless work, he’s moved mountains.

Our work is not done. Bill’s memory is another reason to compel us forward.

Bill said he was going to retire in 2013. He most certainly did not. I’m glad he’s getting some rest now. This is probably the only way he ever would, and he’s done more than his share to make the world a better place.

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Facilitation Tools for Virtual Times

Working on the frontlines to build community safety and prevent violence is incredibly hard work in the best of times. The COVID-19 pandemic multiplied the degree of difficulty because the work is about relationships, it’s about seeing people face to face and building trust and camaraderie.

In the first months of the pandemic, we spent a lot of time listening to our community partners, and they told us that they needed help because Zoom and Google Meet weren’t replacing the intimacy of in-person meetings. So we created a free Digital Facilitation Toolkit.

The toolkit is full of ideas for group activities, ice breakers, and discussion topics meant to break down the new barriers created by screens. There are also plenty of tech tips. While we wrote it with our partners in mind, we believe the kit could be useful to any person or organization trying to make human connections. So please download the kit — we hope it helps.

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Healing Trauma to Change Narratives

Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight, Mothers in Charge, Inc.

Dear Reader,

In 2001, my son, Khaaliq, was murdered over a parking spot dispute. He was a young social worker, determined to serve children and families in our community. Together, we were going to start an organization that would do just that.

I felt so much grief and trauma after his death, and I thought I could heal best if I connected with people who had also lost their children to violence. When I couldn’t find that organization anywhere in Philadelphia, I started Mother’s in Charge, Inc., in 2003.

Building a successful nonprofit is really hard. I lived and understood the mission, and I knew the people I wanted to reach and help. But things like accounting, putting together grant applications, and getting the word out about our work — the things that are crucial to establishing a strong organization — were completely new challenges for me.

Then I met Equal Justice USA. They understand what organizations like mine need to grow strong. They understand that healing must be delivered to everyone effected by violence in this country. Healing trauma is a foundation of their work to transform our justice system, to reduce violence, and to create safe communities.

I hope you can take a few minutes to read EJUSA’s new report, Healing Trauma, Changing Narratives: EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network. In it you’ll find stories about me and four other leaders making a powerful impact in the communities we serve. And you will also understand how YOU make our success possible by investing in EJUSA.

The timing feels right as our nation experiences the biggest need for collective healing in modern history.
I’m so proud and so glad to have met the folks at EJUSA. They are my friends forever.
Warmly,
Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight
Founder and Executive Director
Mothers in Charge, Inc.

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If we want to change our justice system…

Reimagining Justice This Month | September 2020

Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence – responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.

If we want to change our justice system, we have to change the way we talk about it, Represent Justice
Words Matter. When we reduce people to labels such as “criminal” and “felon,” how does it shape our beliefs about those who’ve been impacted by the justice system? Represent Justice emphasizes the language that centers humanity instead of harming through labels.

Grief Camp Helps Chicago Kids Find Community, Heal From Trauma After Losing Loved Ones To Violence, Block Club Chicago
For 10 years, Camp Sheila has supported children and families who lost loved ones to homicide. Through its programs, the camp provides resources needed to heal like counseling, community-building, and art therapy.

Dear Beloved: Music & Storytelling with SOL Development & BE-IMAGINATIVE, KQED Arts
In the absence of public support for victims and survivors, Black Bay Area residents are using art to heal with and care for those who have lost loved ones to police and community violence.

EJUSA’s PARTNERS IN ACTION

For those who died and those still living, Miles Mulrain Jr. marches on, Orlando Sentinel
“This isn’t about a hashtag. This is literally about life and death.” EJUSA Trauma & Healing Network member Miles Mulrain is the founder of Let Your Voice Be Heard Orlando. For the past four years, Miles has taken his own experiences with racism, violence, and police brutality to transform his Central Florida community.

Gun violence in Philadelphia: Town Hall Discussion and Resources, ABC 6 Philadelphia
Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight is the founder of Mothers in Charge, Inc., an organization that supports parents who have lost their children to gun violence. Earlier this month, Dorothy participated in a town hall with fellow leaders in the city to share her perspectives on how to transform safety. Catch Dorothy at the 45-minute mark.

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Learning the Stories of Trauma

A poster for the film "A Prison Within". A man with a shaved head stands in front of a prison, looking up toward the sky. He is wearing a long sleeved white shirt.

San Quentin State Prison is notorious for a number of reasons. Located north of San Francisco, it is home to the nation’s largest death row — 737 people when Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on executions in 2019. San Quentin has been featured in movies, books, podcasts, and more, and earlier in 2020 held about 3,700 people.

San Quentin is also home to the Victim Offender Education Group (VOEG), run by the Insight Prison Project. The program brings together victims of violence and people who have caused harm for an intense healing process that begins with the recognition that those two identities often overlap. The group uses restorative justice practices to pursue true accountability by acknowledging harm, taking responsibility for it, and working to repair it.

“The Prison Within” is an amazing new documentary, directed by Katherin Hervey and narrated by Hill Harper, that reveals the healing power of VOEG and the humanity and growth of the men who take its journey.

In becoming the world’s most relentless jailer, the U.S. has in large part disregarded the root causes of violence and our national responsibility in allowing them to sustain and even thrive. The men in this film — Samuel W. Johnson, Sr., Nythell “Nate” Collins, Eddie Herena, to name just a few of the sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands at the heart of the film — tell their stories and reveal the way that unaddressed childhood trauma overpowered them and steered their lives. But they haven’t given up on themselves.

Troy Williams spent 18 years at San Quentin before being released in 2014. Today he is an advocate for justice transformation as well as an accomplished storyteller. In the film he reflects on the trauma so many carry and says, “We have to learn another person’s story before we give up on them and throw them away.”

The trauma is everywhere. “I have yet to meet a person in prison who hasn’t been a victim for most, if not all, of their life,” says Jaimie Karroll, a former facilitator for the Insight Prison Project, herself a childhood kidnapping and assault survivor.
The film features experts like former EJUSA board member Sonya Shah, a founder of the Ahisma Collective, which offers restorative justice practices; Dionne Niemi, an activist who also works with law enforcement to address their trauma; and sujatha baliga, one of the nation’s leading practitioners of restorative justice and a senior fellow at Impact Justice. All are survivors of violence.

“If we don’t have explanations, we can’t possibly figure out how to make sure that [violence] doesn’t happen again,” says baliga in the film.

“The Prison Within” gives viewers a remarkable insight into the explanations but also most crucially the solution…healing.
You can rent this film from a number of media outlets, including Amazon, Apple TV/iTunes, Google, on demand from your cable provider, and more.

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From Lynchings to Executions

This week, our allies at the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) released “Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the Death Penalty System.” For the ever-growing number of people who pay attention to justice issues, that blunt subtitle does not come as a shock.

That doesn’t make this report — written by Ngozi Ndulue, DPIC’s senior director of research and special projects — any less vital as we seek to transform a racist justice system.

The statistics around the death penalty’s racism remain steady. To name just one, the murder of a white person is far more likely to lead to a death sentence than the murder of a Black person. Seventy-five percent of the cases on our nation’s death rows involve white victims, even though more than half of all homicide victims are non-white. The message about whose lives matter in the eyes of the legal system couldn’t be clearer.

This reality is a natural extension of how we got our modern death penalty system: our notorious legacy of slavery and lynchings. “Enduring Justice” includes a deeply reported history of the evolution from lynchings to executions. That section includes two graphics, maps of the U.S. One shows the distribution of lynchings, the other shows the distribution of executions of Black people. The similarity of the two graphics is staggering.

A graphic of two US maps. The map on the left shows the locations of lynchings of Black people in the US from 1883 - 1940. The map on the right shows legal executions of Black people in the US from 1972-2020. The maps closely resemble one another.
Lynchings of Black Americans versus legal executions of Black Americans

What’s clear is that, like slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow segregation before it, the modern death penalty is used as an instrument of social control, particularly a tool for controlling the Black population. And it’s all done under the guise of public safety.

But the reality is, the death penalty has been deeply harmful to the communities that still use it. It is the most extreme and egregious response to violence, and yet violence flourishes at higher rates in the places that actively seek it. The death penalty wastes a huge amount of resources, which stands in the way of community-led violence reduction strategies that are actually proven to make communities safer and can liberate Black and Brown communities from the devastating effects of over-policing, mass incarceration, and executions.

In the wake of violence, communities need safety, healing, and accountability that repairs harm for everyone impacted. That’s true justice. The death penalty ignores every one of those needs.

Please read this report. We cannot transform our justice system without ending the racist death penalty.

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Filling Gaps to Save Lives

Lakeesha Eure, a black woman with locs, stands in a park smiling with a community member. The man is wearing sunglasses, a red shirt and blazer, and is taller than Lakeesha.

EJUSA Trauma and Healing Network member Lakeesha Eure is the director of the Shani Baraka Women’s Resource Center in Newark, NJ. Since co-founding the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition (NAVC) in 2009, Lakeesha has led community-based violence intervention efforts throughout the city

NAVC was founded to empower Newark residents with social and political awareness, and to support survivors in the midst of violence. As COVID-19 continues to disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities nationwide, Lakeesha has expanded her work to support survivors in the midst of collective trauma, financial insecurity, and uncertainty. We talked about those changes.

If you could identify one COVID-related need that stands out in your community and the people you work with, what would it be?

The lack of access to information is a major hindrance for those most at risk for domestic violence, community violence, and sexual assault. The assumption is that everyone is on social media, but our elders are not necessarily on social media. Domestic violence survivors are often restricted from technology by their partners, so they don’t have access to important information. Due to COVID, we don’t have door-to-door, store-to-store wellness checks with flyers in hand to give to people. During an election, we have door knockers, lawn signs, and posters everywhere. During this pandemic, we need the same. How do people get tested? Where can they get food? Where can they get resources?

What are you doing to meet that need?

We are doing regular wellness checks. Anyone who has ever walked into my center and put their name on a sign-in sheet has received a personal call, even multiple calls from different people on my staff. We have flyers and brochures we’re handing out to people in order to let them know that we are still open. We’ve shortened our hours, due to COVID, but we have an on-call person to answer phones if people need to reach us after hours. We’re trying to make sure that people still feel heard and responded to at all times. We’re trying to reduce some of the anxiety and fear people are feeling by being present and available.

What have you seen happening in your community that inspires your work?

Foundations like Victoria Fund and the Healthcare Foundation of NJ reached out to find out what’s happening on the ground and how they could support our needs. There was no red tape, they just asked for our needs and a fiscal sponsor, and then made it accessible within a week. Funds in hand! What if we could have that outside of a pandemic? Most grants require a bible-sized application, months to hear anything back.

The prosecutor’s office has been really helpful by providing escorts and accompaniment for victims fleeing violence. The hotel industry has been honoring requests with minimal red tape for people who are fleeing. Different social services organizations have been working with our organization to make sure The Women’s Center constituents have access to the resource they are providing. All it took was a phone call and resources were being provided with no lines, no wait, free of charge. The pandemic has erased a lot of bureaucracy and red tape.

Some leaders and grassroots organizations have increased their calls for reforms to our justice system, our health care system, and our financial system in the midst of COVID-19. Things like decarceration and universal health care are starting to be seen in a different light, as we notice the shortcomings of our existing systems. What transformations would you like to see take place not just in the midst of the pandemic, but permanently?

Local government agencies have been able to secure funding to house people during the pandemic. Can those funds be applied to long-term solutions? If you’re able to keep people from being evicted [during a pandemic], some of these things could be done going forward so people do not experience so much trauma around homelessness, being victimized, or hospitalized. If we could provide medication and hospital visits, continue to not criminalize people for misdemeanors, wave fees for late payments to utility bills, if places can provide meals every single day, if undocumented citizens can receive resources without worrying about ICE, why can’t we continue to do that going forward?

Your work centers survivors of domestic violence, as well as community violence. What kind of changes and challenges are you facing now due to COVID?

With both domestic and community violence, people are becoming a little more desensitized because they are not seeing it up close. Before COVID there was more outrage because people were seeing victims up close, seeing bodies in the middle of the street, witnessing stolen car chases. Families are grieving and they go through it by themselves, especially now with the limited number of people who can attend the funeral. People are not hearing about deaths as much. When one death occurs from violence, it is overshadowed by the 400 deaths from COVID. The pandemic has overshadowed the experience for people not directly impacted.

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