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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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Austin Cuts its Police Budget By a Third

Reimagining Justice This Month | August 2020

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

Austin Cuts Its Police Budget by About a Third, The Appeal
Austin, Texas, is diverting $150 million away from its police department to reinvest those funds in social services, including a “Reimagining Safety” fund as well as the de-policing of several social services.

Healing the Healers, EJUSA
Community leaders are on the frontlines of violence intervention and the confrontation of police brutality. And now they are making sure that their neighbors are safe amid COVID-19. But who makes space for healers to heal themselves? EJUSA’s Lionel Latouche is working to do just that.

We Should Still Defund the Police, The New Yorker
Our team loved this piece because of its broad vision of a different understanding of justice. The writer, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, demonstrates the urgent need to reimagine safety in a way that centers Black and Brown communities.

The Change We Seek, EJUSA
Ruth Rollins, part of our Trauma & Healing Network, supports families that are familiar with violence: “I haven’t seen anyone bringing together mothers of children that are causing harm.” She shifted her work in #Boston to help them heal. Be inspired.

The Prison Within
What if our justice system gave everyone impacted by violence the opportunity to heal, to be heard, and to seek accountability from the person that harmed them? Watch “The Prison Within” to witness the powerful transformation that takes place when survivors of violence work together to uncover one of the root causes of violent crime — untreated trauma. EJUSA is proud to be an organizational partner of this film.

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The Change We Seek

Ruth Rollins is the founder and executive director of We Are Better Together, Warren Daniel Hairston Project (WAB2G), based in Boston. Her organization provides emotional and financial support as well as advocacy for both victims of gun violence and those who cause harm.

She’s also a member of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network. We spoke to her soon after COVID-19 shut down much of the northeast and then again as protests against George Floyd’s murder rolled out across the country to understand how these events were affecting WAB2G’s work. The following is an edited version of those discussions.

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 major needs are financial and emotional insecurity. Many members of our community, people who have lost loved ones to homicide, expressed that social distancing felt like grief or grieving all over again. For those who have incarcerated family members, fear of their incarcerated loved ones getting sick caused a lot of emotional turmoil and stress.

How is WAB2G working to meet that need? How has your work shifted?

We had to get really creative with programming. We started doing twice-weekly emotional check-ins virtually. We hosted webinars on trauma, grief, loss, and other coping tools. We partnered with other agencies who were working on early release for incarcerated individuals. We offered financial support through gift cards, visa cards, and groceries. Most recently, I turned my backyard into an office space and healing space so that we could meet in person and still practice social distancing. We’ve even been doing court advocacy through Zoom for our members whose children have been arrested during COVID-19.

How do you see inequality or inequity playing out in your community? Has that inequality or inequity been amplified by COVID-19?

My focus has been on the gun violence that has increased locally during COVID-19. The national conversations (around race and inequity) created a lot of unity between agencies, both local and national organizations. It also highlighted division along the lines of race in Boston. Our organization worked with Family Justice and Healing, a national council for formerly incarcerated women and girls, to get incarcerated individuals who had preexisting conditions released during the pandemic.

While it was a successful effort, it caused some division because there was not much communication with the family members of those who experienced the harm. Family members didn’t feel seen or heard and didn’t have enough time to prepare emotionally or to find out what the plans were for individuals once they were released.

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

I was actually inspired by what wasn’t happening. I haven’t seen anyone bringing together mothers of children that are causing harm. I’ve been organizing focus groups under the platform of “Help Me before Death or Incarceration Knocks on My Door.” We’re connecting with a lot of mothers, particularly mothers of girls who are committing harm, and gathering data on what has worked for them, what hasn’t worked for them, what government agencies they worked with and which agencies dropped the ball when they were supposed to be offering services. Many agencies were offering services and receiving funding for those services but not actually rendering the services to those in need. I’ve been sharing some of the results of what we’ve found so far. The mayor has offered funding and we’re now able to fund two part-time positions to help continue this work.

There’s been a big drive to empty prisons and jails and quickly. How could authorities have done things differently to accommodate the needs of survivors?

They should have listened to agencies like mine who have already been working with this population. They should have done assessments of those who were at the highest risk. The grassroots organizations should have been able to come up with an effective protocol to provide to the authorities but we were dismissed until people started dying.

Any final words?

We are creating the change we seek, just like we’ve always done. We’re still supporting survivors while maintaining a seat at the table to do effective policy work that our members may need for their loved ones who are incarcerated.

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Healing the Healers

Lionel Latouche, EJUSA's senior project manager for Trauma to Trust

Five months ago, cities and states across the U.S. initiated a series of shelter-in-place orders as COVID-19 surged for the first time. Communities experienced waves of grief, loss, and economic insecurity. With the pandemic far from over, Black and Brown Americans continue to bear the brunt of its impact, and of the layered collective trauma that COVID-19 has wrought.

Lionel Latouche, senior project manager of EJUSA’s Trauma to Trust program, has been spearheading a series of conversations for service providers to establish their own means of personal healing as they navigate the frontlines of both community violence intervention work and the global pandemic.

How did this series come about?

(EJUSA’s Violence Reduction Initiatives team) saw the collective trauma that so many people are going through at this moment, and narrowed in on how Black and Brown people are affected. We wanted to make sure that our community partners have the space they need to access their own healing and acknowledge the trauma that they’re experiencing right now as well. It’s one thing to be a Black or Brown person processing this moment. It’s another to also be the person that your neighborhood is relying on to continue to provide critical things like violence prevention, mutual aid, and emergency services while everything is happening.

What is the importance of conversations like these, and healing as a whole?

We know that structural racism exacerbated the effects of the pandemic in our communities, and those effects are felt. The workshops elevate this conversation—the intersection of COVID-19, systemic and racial oppression, and what we can do to sustain ourselves while we work toward change. The goal is to give people tools for connection and self-care.

For our folks, primarily, it is to equip them with the information and support they need to feel safe talking about trauma and emotional stress. In Black communities, we need to do it with people who look like us, understand us, and have similar experiences as us because then those healers become a kind of credible messenger that shows us that it’s safe to talk about and process our trauma.

What does a typical workshop look like?

We start with two circles. One asks, “What can I do for myself?” The other asks, “What can we do for others?” We break these out into two distinct conversations.

By doing it this way, we’re building a network of support and mutual aid for folks who don’t always get the time to think of how to care for themselves. We’re using breathing techniques and guided meditations with members, giving people tangible tools to tap into mindfulness.

So far we’ve facilitated circles nationally for groups of community leaders, service providers, as well as people who’ve been impacted by violence — families of violence survivors, families of murder victims.

What has been the response from community members who participated so far?

There’s been a lot of openness, a lot of appreciation for starting the discussion. Everyone is getting to witness each other focus on their self care.

Others said that it was the validation and acknowledgement of pain and struggle they were moving through that was most helpful. Just having that permission to feel and express whatever emotions came up in these spaces. It was a different level of vulnerability—not having to be the “strong black man or woman.”

EJUSA continues to facilitate healing circles and support our community partners as we navigate the current pandemic. Follow us on social media, and keep an eye out for future circles and ways to join us in building healing-centered approaches to safety and justice.

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Our Anti-Racist Vision for Police Accountability

To transform our justice system, we must change the way we think about accountability. Our culture of punishment as accountability has never made us safer. But there are models of accountability that heal rather than harm.

EJUSA has a vision for how this kind of accountability can apply to policing for the damage and pain it has caused in Black and Brown communities. Read my latest op-ed to learn more, and please share it with your friends and family. Here’s a sample:

Police enforced slavery, enabled lynchings by white mobs, enforced Black Codes, and continue to criminalize Black and Brown kids in our schools for the same behavior that gets white kids a mere warning. In short, policing as a system has always upheld white supremacy, no matter how many individual officers act in good faith.

By now, it is clear that our justice system, including policing, must transform. Transformation cannot happen without accountability—for the present and the ugly past. But what does that look like in practice?

…An anti-racist vision of accountability repairs harm instead of causing more of it. This process, modeled on restorative justice, begins with the essential step of acknowledging and taking responsibility for the harm. From there, accountability continues with additional steps to make things right and prevent future harm.

Please read the entire op-ed and share it on social media. We can’t end mass incarceration or heal our brutal legacy of racism and police brutality unless we redefine accountability…for everyone.

Thank you for getting the message out there.

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What would non-police first responders look like?

Reimagining Justice This Month | July 2020

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

What Would Non-police First Responders Look Like?, The Appeal/NowThis News
Police officers can spend as little as 1% of their time responding to violence. They mostly respond to issues related to homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse. So what could community-based, non-police first responders look like?

Community Street Team, Deescalation Training Credited For Newark’s Decreasing Homicide, Violent Crime Rates, CBS New York
EJUSA’s community partners are transforming our neighborhoods by reimagining the ways that we approach community safety. The Newark Community Street Team is advancing violence reduction strategies that are having a huge impact because they address trauma and turn away from over-policing and incarceration.

Community Peacemakers in Chicago Offer a Proven Alternative to Policing, Truthout
These programs prove that there are alternatives to policing that ensure community safety, but their effectiveness relies on listening to and honoring the leadership of those most impacted by violence.

Wolf Administration Releases ‘Trauma-Informed PA’ Plan with Recommendations and Steps for the Commonwealth and Providers to Become Trauma-Informed, Governor Tom Wolfe
Pennsylvania’s governor released a statewide plan for a “Trauma-Informed PA.” This plan would shift the focus away from punitive justice toward healing-centered practices that focus on historical and community trauma, and be implemented across state agencies and state-funded offices.

The case for racism response funds — A collective response to racist acts, The Appeal
Punitive responses to racism do not do nearly enough to prevent further harm. Approaches like Racism Response Funds would ensure accountability by focusing on healing the individual who has been harmed and dismantling the systems that allowed that harm in the first place.

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Newark redirects police funds to establish citywide anti-violence office

Reimagining Justice This Month | June 2020

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

Ordinance Outlawing White Supremacy, Establishing Anti-Violence Office Signed into Law, TapInto
Last Wednesday, the Newark City Council passed an ordinance to redirect funds away from the police department to create a citywide Office of Violence Prevention. When we say “defund the police”, this is what it looks like. When we say “justice, reimagined”, this is what we mean.

Trauma to Trust uses ACEs science to heal wounds between community members, police, ACES Connection
To transform our systems, institutions must be aware of and accountable for the harm and trauma they cause in communities—especially Black communities in the U.S. EJUSA programs center the healing of trauma as a way to build public safety. That work takes shape through community leaders like Al-Tariq Best, a member of our Trauma and Healing Network.

911 Services That Dispatch Mental Health Counselors, Not Cops, Gain Traction, Truthout
Over the past half-century, we’ve forwarded countless social needs—mental health care, drug intervention, school safety—to the police, who are trained to solve none of these issues. But cities like Austin, Texas, are looking to course correct by making emergency mental health services more accessible to those who need them.

Sex Workers Have Never Counted on Cops. Let’s Learn From Their Safety Tactics., Truthout
Communities who cannot count on law enforcement to ensure their safety have been reimagining approaches to safety and justice for years by forming mutual aid networks and systems of communal care. These informal systems have stepped in to ensure that community members have access to health care, child care, and other means of survival.

Defund the Police? What it really means and how we get there: an EJUSA primer
What does it mean to defund the police? What would a future look like where justice did not mean punishment, and where community needs were met with care rather than violence? Our team created a primer to discuss the possibilities that the current moment presents us.

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Equal Justice USA awarded $200,000 grant from the Simmons Sister Fund at Texas Women’s Foundation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, June 12, 2020

Contact: Patrick Egan | 718-551-6603 | patricke@ejusa.org

Equal Justice USA awarded $200,000 grant from the Simmons Sister Fund at Texas Women’s Foundation

Grant will Support Ongoing Efforts to Transform Justice System and Break Cycles of Trauma

New York, NY – Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) was awarded a grant of $200,000 from the Simmons Sister Fund at Texas Women’s Foundation to support EJUSA’s ongoing efforts to build a new justice system that breaks cycles of trauma devastating communities of color today and throughout the history of the United States.

With support from the Foundation and other donors, EJUSA will work with community organizations across the country to establish responses to violence centered on healing and restitution. To this end, EJUSA will mobilize and train local leaders, amplify the voices of those impacted by violence, advocate for state and local policy changes, and shift the national narrative on violence, trauma, and race. Recently, this work led to new resources for community-based efforts to reduce gun violence, repeal of the death penalty in Colorado, and increased public funding for local healing and anti-violence organizations delivering services to trauma survivors of color.

“The recent murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis is a call to action for fundamental, transformative change,” said Shari Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA. “Now more than ever, our nation must invest in an affirmative vision of justice that can deliver safety, healing, and equity to all. EJUSA and our national network of partners are grateful for the visionary leadership and support of the Simmons Sister Fund at the Texas Women’s Foundation.”

Texas Women’s Foundation is Transforming Texas for Women and Girls, empowering them to build stronger, more equitable communities. Since 1985, the Foundation has been a trusted leader in advancing social and economic change for women and girls in Texas. One of the world’s largest women’s foundations, the Foundation raises funding from a broad base of donors, including individuals, foundations and corporations. These resources support more than $6.3 million in annual investments that advance economic security and leadership for Texas women and girls through groundbreaking research, advocacy, grants and programs. The Foundation’s statewide research on issues affecting women and girls provides decision-makers and lawmakers with critical data to inform policies, practices and programs in the state. Its grantmaking and innovative programs support solutions that help Texas women and girls thrive. In addition, Texas Women’s Foundation is an acknowledged leader and advocate in the gender lens investing movement and has deployed 100% of its assets – endowments, operating investments and donor-advised funds – in a gendered impact portfolio that yields strong financial returns and social benefits to women and girls. For more information, visit www.txwf.org.

Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) is a national organization that works to transform the justice system by ending the death penalty, strengthening programs that help crime survivors rebuild their lives, and promoting trauma-informed responses to violence that save lives and heal communities.

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